Standing Committee F

[Mrs. Marion Roe in the Chair]

Hunting Bill

Clause 7 - Hare Coursing

Question proposed [this day], That the clause stand part of the Bill. 
 Question again proposed.

Marion Roe: I remind the Committee that with this we are taking the following:
 New clause 10—Hares— 
'Registration under Part 2 shall not be effected in respect of the hunting of hares.'.
 New clause 15—Hares (No. 2)— 
'Registration under Part 2 shall not be effected in respect of the hunting of hares of any species.'.
 Amendment No. 1, in 
title, line 2, leave out 'To prohibit hare coursing.'.

James Gray: Before lunch, I ticked off the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr. Foster) for attempting to make a fundamental change to the way of life in the countryside in a rather short and inadequate way. Since then I have been considering what we are discussing under the clause stand part debate. Four separate debates have been rather awkwardly elided into one. We are, of course, discussing the outright abolition of hare coursing, rather than whether or not it should be considered by the registrar or tribunal. That is the stand part debate itself. In relation to amendment No. 1, we are also considering whether hare coursing is the same as hare hunting and whether the two things should be differentiated in the long title. We are considering new clause 10, which would result in an outright ban on hare hunting—if it is different from hare coursing, which is a matter of some debate.
 In relation to new clause 15, rather strangely, we are discussing whether the ban should relate to all species of hare. That is unnecessary. We are largely talking about the brown hare because the mountain hare is not currently hunted. The question is whether the word ''hare'' in the new clause tabled by the hon. Member for West Lancashire (Mr. Pickthall) covers all species of hare. I suppose an outright abolitionist could argue that it is worth tying up anything that could conceivably be thought of as a loophole. 
 I fear that this may take a little time because these are important matters that need to be considered properly. I will start by dealing with the new clauses and then go on to talk briefly about amendment No. 1. Finally, I will focus on the substantive debate and whether the clause should stand part of the Bill. 
 Amendment No. 1 deletes the words ''hare coursing'' from the long title. There was some 
 discussion this morning about whether it was correct for the Minister to differentiate hare coursing and hunting. Opposition Members argue that that is an absurd distinction and that hare coursing is hunting, in the sense that it involves dogs chasing animals for the purposes of killing them. There is a distinction between the two things in the sense that hunting is done by smell and coursing by sight. However, it is quite wrong to differentiate the two things in the long title, hence amendment No. 1. 
 Without amendment No. 12, the Bill admits that hare coursing is a form of hunting. As a barrister—I am not a barrister—one would argue that the Bill is internally inconsistent. It acknowledges that hare coursing is hunting, but it also differentiates hare coursing and hunting in the long title. Leaving aside the rights, wrongs or indifferences of pursuing animals with hounds, there is definitely an inaccuracy in the drafting of the Bill. 
 The cruelty and/or utility of hare coursing should be considered by the registrar and the tribunal in precisely the same way as the cruelty and/or utility of hare hunting. It is not right to differentiate between the two. The definitions of utility and cruelty in the Bill are wildly inadequate. We have argued for some weeks that they are appalling and wrong, and that their principal purpose is to abolish any form of hunting with dogs. Even given that they are inadequate, it seems only sensible that the registrar and tribunal should have the right to consider hare coursing in the same way that they consider all other forms of hunting with dogs. 
 The long title and the Bill are entirely inconsistent, and amendment No. 1 seeks to put that right. The hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) acknowledged this morning that he has spotted the problem. He has asked for a better definition of ''hunting'' in clause 45, and we may return to that when we get to that clause. One way of solving the problem may be to define hunting more carefully. 
 The hon. Member for Worcester also spotted the problem, but his solution is not acceptable. He would ban hare hunting as well as hare coursing. In a rather inadequate way, that would at least solve the confusion in the Bill. However, there are some points to consider about his suggestion. To seek to justify in an extremely short speech the banning of an activity enjoyed by hundreds of people for hundreds of years, not because the hon. Gentleman believes it to be a bad thing, not because it has no utility or because it is cruel, but simply to correct an anomaly in the Bill is an extraordinary thing to do. If the hon. Gentleman wants to ban hare hunting, fine, that is his view. He should tell the Committee precisely why he thinks that hare hunting is a disgraceful activity. But to focus on a drafting inadequacy in a facetious, light-hearted way and to say, ''I have found a very clever way of correcting the drafting inadequacy—I will ban hare hunting to correct the draftsman's errors'', is wrong and belittles the concerns of hundreds of people in the countryside who are very worried about what will happen to their sport and pastime. 
 The hon. Gentleman's approach to moving new clause 10 was wrong. Anyway, even if the new clause were accepted, it would not solve the drafting problem that I have highlighted. The long title would still separate hare coursing from hunting. Therefore, even by his terms, inadequate as they are, the new clause would not achieve what he said it would. 
 Whatever side of the argument one is on, I hope that the Committee will agree that amendment No. 1 makes a great deal of sense, approaching the matter purely from a technocrat's viewpoint, and that the words ''hare coursing'' should be deleted from the long title. 
 It might be sensible now to consider the substantive part of what is proposed by new clauses 10 and 15. In proposing his new clause, the hon. Member for Worcester did not seek to do that. This is the only time that the Committee will have an opportunity substantively to discuss hare hunting, as opposed to hare coursing. Therefore, it is reasonable that we should spend a certain amount of time considering the purpose of hare hunting—or beagling, as I prefer to call it—and whether it has utility or is cruel. 
 The new clauses would ban hare hunting outright. New clause 15 would add the unnecessary extra words ''of any species''. Mountain hares are found only in Scotland, to which the Bill does not refer. Therefore, such a change is not actually necessary, because there is only one species of hare in the vast bulk of England. There may be some mountain hares in Derbyshire, but that is the only exception to the rule. I will not spend an undue amount of time on new clause 15, which we believe to be unnecessary. 
 New clause 10 would simply ban the hunting of hares, which seems to us to be wrong. It seeks to single out a type of activity and implies that the proposer of the new clause knows for sure that, for one reason or another, hunting hare is by definition worse than hunting foxes or mink, or using dogs for any other purpose under registration. He is saying, unilaterally and single-handedly, that he knows that it is a bad thing that must be banned, that we must not allow the tribunal or the registrar the opportunity to consider it and that we must not allow evidence to be brought forward on whether the use of dogs for hare hunting in a particular place or particular circumstances has utility or leads to suffering. He wants to ban that discussion and dictate to the registrar that he may have no view on hare hunting. 
 Just as we argued on Tuesday on deer hunting, we believe that to be illogical and unnecessary. The way in which the cruelty and utility tests have been drafted probably means anyway that if a pack of beagles such as the Wick and District beagles, whose tie I have the honour to wear today, were to go before the registrar, it would be extraordinarily difficult for it to achieve registration under the Bill's terms.

Peter Luff: My hon. Friend said earlier that he preferred to call the practice beagling. Will he join me, however, in acknowledging that basset hounds also play an
 important role in hare hunting? One important player in my constituency is Leadon Vale basset hounds.

James Gray: I take every opportunity to pay tribute to basset hounds, which fulfil a similar function. I have never actually been out with basset hounds. I would love to come. They always remind me of Clement Freud, so I can never take them all that seriously. Perhaps I might one day have the privilege of coming out with them, and I shall try to banish all thought of Clement Freud from my mind when I do.
 The hon. Member for Worcester is seeking to ban hare hunting outright without allowing it to go before the registrar, but the truth is that there is no firm scientific evidence at all on the effect on a hare's welfare of being closely pursued, caught and killed by hounds. It is true, as Lord Burns said, that death and insensibility would normally follow in a matter of seconds and that the experience, in his famous phrase, ''compromised the welfare'' of the hare. Well, indeed it does, but so would shooting, snaring, gassing or any other means of dealing with a hare. The hon. Member for Worcester quoted Lord Burns extensively in trying to justify his ban, but I have a direct quote from Lord Burns: 
''There is a lack of firm scientific evidence about the effect on the welfare of a hare of being closely pursued, caught and killed by hounds during hunting.''
 I refer again to the excellent Professor Bateson who, in his oft-quoted e-mail to Mr. Wise said: 
''Only somebody who was scientifically illiterate could argue that evidence from a new area of research was 'incontrovertible'. I shall write to Michael to distance myself from that view.''

Mike Hall: Could the hon. Gentleman advise the Committee on whether those e-mails have been published? If they have, are copies available for all Members?

James Gray: No, they have not been published. They are private e-mails that I quoted extensively in Committee on Tuesday. They have been published on the front page of The Daily Telegraph today, which is a rather useful place to refer to them.

Alun Michael: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

James Gray: In a moment. I should like to answer the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mr. Hall) first. The Minister need not jump to his feet.
 The e-mails were private ones between two people, which have come into my hands. It was quite an extensive exchange of e-mails. There is no reason why they should be published. It is interesting how sensitive the Labour party is on this matter. The important point is the clear words, in an e-mail from Professor Bateson to Mr. Wise, which I quote again: 
''Only somebody who was scientifically illiterate could argue that evidence from a new area of research was 'incontrovertible'. I shall write to Michael''—
 that is a reference, of course, to the Minister— 
''to distance myself from that view.''
 The Minister now wants to jump to his feet to correct me on that.

Alun Michael: He does indeed. I want to point out that the letter that I have received from Professor Bateson bears very little comparison to the terms in which the hon. Gentleman has, perhaps inadvertently, misled the Committee, The Daily Telegraph and a number of periodicals as well. Professor Bateson's letter is interesting and constructive, but it does not bear the interpretation that the hon. Gentleman has sought to put on it, and it certainly makes no accusation of scientific illiteracy.

James Gray: The Minister has a delightfully smug expression.

Alun Michael: Yes, he does. [Laughter.]

James Gray: We will see what we can do to wipe that off his face as we successfully did this morning. The Minister says that his letter from Professor Bateson does not agree with Professor Bateson's e-mail of last week to Mr. Wise. As of 9 o'clock on Tuesday night he denied flatly that he had received a letter. He said, ''No, I haven't had a letter from Mr. Bateson. Oh no, he hasn't written to me. No, absolutely not, I know nothing about that. Not me, sir.''

Alun Michael: On a point of order, Mrs. Roe. The hon. Gentleman is again misleading the Committee, perhaps inadvertently. I said on Tuesday that I had seen no letter from Professor Bateson, but one might have been sent. I did indeed see one after the end of the sitting.

Marion Roe: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman has listened to what the Minister has said.

James Gray: Further to that point of order, Mrs. Roe. I am a little disturbed by the fact that the Minister accuses me of misleading the Committee. I did not mislead the Committee. My hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker) is busy checking Hansard for me. I made it plain that on Tuesday evening the Minister said that he did not have any such letter, but now he is proud of the fact that he did. The Minister said on Tuesday evening that he had not received any such letter. He then said:
''When I have received it, I shall read it and respond to it.''—[Official Report, Standing Committee F, 13 February 2003; c. 1002.]
 He said that he had had no letter. He now says that he had a letter.

Marion Roe: Order. I have listened to the hon. Gentleman. I think that we should resume the debate. Points have been made on both sides of the argument. I now wish us to concentrate on the argument before us.

James Gray: I take it that the Minister regrets accusing me of misleading the Committee.

Marion Roe: Order. We shall resume the debate.

James Gray: Indeed, Mrs. Roe, and I accept the Minister's apology.

Marion Roe: Order. I wish the debate to be resumed. That is what we are going to do.

James Gray: If the Minister would stop jumping to his feet, that is exactly what I would do. We have obviously hit a raw nerve on this issue.

Alun Michael: On a point of order, Mrs. Roe. The hon. Gentleman has just read out words that demonstrate that he has misled the Committee. We have heard no apology from him, but he continually adds innuendo to his comments from the other day, which have been shown to be wrong.

Marion Roe: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman has listened to what the Minister has said. I have ruled that the debate and not the present argument, which is not helpful to the debate, should continue. Kindly continue the debate on this clause, Mr. Gray.

James Gray: Indeed. The Minister's reaction is interesting. The fact that I quoted a letter from Professor Bateson that accused the right hon. Gentleman of being scientifically illiterate is absolutely central to the discussion. [Hon. Members: ''No, you did not.''] I quoted an e-mail. The Minister is so sensitive about this matter. Let me be absolutely accurate. I quoted an e-mail from Professor Bateson dated Tuesday 21 January 2003, timed at 9.33 am. He said:
''Only somebody who was scientifically illiterate could argue that evidence from a new area of research was 'incontrovertible'.''
 Reacting to that accusation from Professor Bateson the Minister said, ''Oh well, don't worry, I have had a letter from Professor Bateson and it does not say the same thing.'' I welcome that, and such a letter would add a great deal to the matter under discussion today. 
 I am glad that the Minister has now had that letter. I presume that, since he has referred to it, he will be circulating that letter to the Committee, together with his response to it. I noticed that the Minister was busy signing a response to that letter from Professor Bateson. If the Minister is to use the new evidence from Professor Bateson to justify the banning of stag hunting or, if the amendment allows, hare coursing, it is hugely important that he publishes that evidence and makes us all aware of it. Otherwise, he cannot rely on it.

Alun Michael: I am pleased to tell the hon. Gentleman that I have received Professor Bateson's agreement to publish the exchange to members of the Committee. I would not circulate correspondence of that sort without the other party's permission.
 The hon. Gentleman seems to have picked up some comments in exchanges that have not been made more widely available and to have provided what Professor Bateson has described as some spin on them. I suggest that he returns to the arguments.

James Gray: I am delighted to hear that the Minister will now publish the interesting new evidence from Professor Bateson. I presume that he will circulate it to members of the Committee soon enough after our return from the recess to give us time to consider it. I also hope that you, Mrs. Roe, or Mr. Speaker will give us the opportunity to consider it either later in the Committee or on Report. What Professor Bateson says will plainly be of key interest in our discussion of stag hunting and the incontrovertible evidence about hare hunting.

Alun Michael: I have not said that the letter produces new evidence. It does not. It shows that
 Professor Bateson stands by his views. The hon. Gentleman will recall that on Tuesday I quoted in extenso from Professor Bateson's response to my letter in May. The only thing that the letter will make clear is that the hon. Gentleman, in his partial quotations from the secretive e-mails that have been leaked to him, has tried to divert the Committee's attention away from the evidence that has been provided and the serious issues on which we should be focusing.

James Gray: The point that we were making about deer hunting and Professor Bateson and the point that I am making here about hare hunting is that there is no incontrovertible evidence that would justify treating deer hunting, and now hare hunting, differently from foxhunting. I was simply saying that the registrar and the tribunal should consider both. That seems to me to be Professor Bateson's opinion. He has consistently said that there is nothing that necessarily shows that deer hunting is cruel or must be banned outright. The Minister prays in aid incontrovertible evidence to justify it, but doing so is scientifically illiterate. That is what Professor Bateson said. Unless the letter controverts that, it remains the case. The Minister is deciding unilaterally to ban deer hunting.

Adrian Flook: Professor Bateson's views appear to have been changeable, to say the least, from 1997 to 2002 or 2003, which shows that his views are those of the last person who sat on him. In many respects it would be much better, as Professor Bateson himself said, if we had another round of considering the evidence instead of relying on his alone.

James Gray: I could not disagree with my hon. Friend more fundamentally. Professor Bateson is a distinguished scientist—a person of great distinction who says what he means and means what he says. All the evidence that he has given has been most carefully worded. I do not agree with my hon. Friend that he blows with the wind in any way. That is a disgraceful remark and my hon. Friend should think twice about it.
 I agree with my hon. Friend that the outcome of what Professor Bateson said is that we do not have the evidence to justify the banning, in this case, of deer hunting but equally of hare hunting. He called for further scientific research to justify it. Therefore, I do not agree with my hon. Friend's first point, but I very much agree with the conclusion that he came to. I hope that he will forgive me for ticking him off in a rather schoolmasterly way. 
 The important question here is whether it is right for beagling to be singled out, as stag hunting was, for an outright ban, as the Minister would have us believe. A moment ago, before moving on to Professor Bateson, I quoted Lord Burns, who said that there was a lack of scientific evidence about the effects of hunting on hares. He went on to say that he had not discovered that hunting of any kind was cruel: 
''Naturally, people ask whether we were implying that hunting is cruel. . . . The short answer to that question is no. There was not sufficient verifiable evidence or data safely to reach views about cruelty.''—[Official Report, House of Lords, 12 March 2001; Vol. 623, c. 533.]
 His colleague Lord Soulsby, one of the most senior vets in the UK, went further, condemning organisations that claimed that the expression equated to cruelty and thus justified an end to hunting. Lord Soulsby said: 
''At no point did the committee conclude, or even attempt to conclude, an assessment of cruelty. Yet many bodies have erroneously—I repeat the word 'erroneously'—quoted the Burns report, stating that it clearly demonstrated that the practice of hunting wild animals with dogs caused cruelty. The report did not state that.''—[Official Report, House of Lords, 12 March 2001; Vol. 623, c. 654.]
 Can we therefore start from an accurate use of Burns and Soulsby? At no stage did they say that hunting with dogs was cruel. That applies to foxhunting and, in this case, to hare hunting. The hon. Member for Worcester quoted Lord Burns extensively. He cannot conclude from him that there is any evidence for the outright banning of hare hunting.

Rob Marris: I shall not read it into the record, but will the hon. Gentleman recognise that cruelty was not in the Burns inquiry's terms of reference? Therefore, it is not surprising that it reached no conclusion one way or the other.

James Gray: The hon. Gentleman is correct. Cruelty was well beyond Lord Burns's remit. He was not asked to judge on it, and he did not do so. Therefore, it would be wrong to pray him in aid as evidence that cruelty was involved. He examined the facts and produced a very useful report, laying out precisely the sort of hunting that occurs, the numbers and so on, all sorts of factual matters that it would not be useful for us to waste our time discussing. As the hon. Gentleman correctly says, he was not asked to judge whether it was cruel. Therefore, it is hardly surprising that he did not reach a conclusion on that.
 That is why it is odd that the only other thing that the hon. Member for Worcester quoted in trying to justify the outright ban was Lord Burns saying that hunting was cruel. Lord Burns did not say that it was cruel. I suspect that quoting Burns backwards and forwards does not achieve all that much. It was largely a factual report and it did not come to a conclusion on whether hunting hares with dogs was cruel. 
 As the hon. Gentleman chose not to do so, it might be useful if I consider whether there is utility in hunting hares with dogs and whether there is any evidence to prove that it is cruel. Hon. Members may not realise that beagling is a long-standing, traditional country sport, which has a unique role in providing reliable information about the state of the hare population in Britain. The only people who collect regular statistics on the numbers and the condition of the hare population in England are the beagle packs. They encourage the conservation of nature and are a powerful force in helping to preserve a healthy balance in the hare population in areas such as my constituency and nearby, where a reasonable amount of beagling goes on. Again, it is species management, something that the Minister promised to include in the Bill, but which he has since allowed to slip from it. 
 As the Burns report says on page 128: 
''all Masters of Hounds may be required to complete a 'Hare Survey Form' giving details of hares seen on each day's hunting. The data . . . assist in monitoring the health of the hare population. As the Game Conservancy Trust confirm, these records provide a better indication of changes in winter populations than do game bag records.''
 Numbers from game bags and hunting records indicate that the population is stable. Burns concluded: 
''Because hare numbers tend to be maintained at high levels in areas where hunting/coursing occurs, the impact of a ban might well be that, in the absence of other changes, the population would decline in those areas. This would partly result from a loss of suitable habitat but also, in a few areas, from the shooting of hares to deter poaching and illegal coursing. However, in comparison with the impact of organised shooting on hare numbers, a ban on hare hunting and coursing would have a negligible effect.''
 I accept that point. None the less, a ban would have some effect and might result in landowners shooting more hares than they currently do. 
 We must remember that the national biodiversity action plan is central to the Government's approach to the hare population. It was established at Rio when my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) was Secretary of State and I was his special adviser. The plan called for the maintaining and expanding of existing hare populations with the aim of doubling the spring numbers of hares in Britain by 2010. 
 The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs administers the plan, although responsibility for implementation has been delegated to the regions. Hunts in every region are in touch with local conservation groups such as wildlife trusts, environment groups, and farm wildlife advisory groups and are providing their support to those organisations in seeking to double the number of hares by 2010, which is the Government's aim. In 1989 and 1990, the Game Conservancy Trust carried out studies on the impact of hare hunting on hare populations and chose nine sites throughout the country. It found that, on average, hunting removed less than 1.7 per cent. of the hare population with a maximum of 7.1 per cent. in one instance, so hunting takes out a reasonably small part of the population, in stark contrast to hare shooting. 
 Between 1989 and 1991, the Game Conservancy Trust carried out studies on four estates that had organised hare shoots to count hares before and after shooting days. It found that the size of the cull, thanks to shooting, ranged from 40 per cent. to nearly 70 per cent. of the hare population. Hunting takes out around 1 to 7 per cent. of the population and shooting takes out between 40 and 70 per cent. If the Government are to stand any chance of achieving their biodiversity action plan target of doubling the brown hare population in England by 2010, they must find a way of saving the hare. Banning the hunting of hares is certainly not a good way of doing that. 
 Decisions on the management of the hare species in England are complex because of the hare's unique status among British wildlife. A ban on hunting would not benefit the hare and would have a serious impact on wider aspects of wildlife management. The hare is 
 an agricultural pest—there is no question about that because it eats an enormous amount of grass—a game animal, a food animal, a target for illegal, gambling-related activities and is an indicator species for the general health of managed habitats, as recognised by its status as a biodiversity action plan species. Lord Burns recognised that complexity when he said: 
''The brown hare can be viewed at the same time as a pest, a game animal and the subject of conservation action.''
 Professor Harris pointed to the paradoxical status of the brown hare during the Portcullis house hearings. He is a leading partner in the national hare biodiversity action plan, whose object is to more than double the population of hares. He said: 
''I guess I have a big problem overall with brown hares. They are not a native species . . . They have been highly detrimental to the native species of hare, the mountain hares . . . So I am not quite sure that trying to manage the habitat to promote numbers of brown hares is necessarily our best''
 overall 
''conservation strategy.''
 Professor Harris, the best friend of those who would ban hunting, holds no brief for the brown hare, which he believes to be an incomer that does not need to be preserved. 
 Within the stated aims of the biodiversity action plan, there should be some acknowledgement of the need to manage brown hare numbers to maintain the population at an appropriate level. That is a balanced position. We want an appropriate level for the brown hare population in the United Kingdom. 
 There is positive utility in hunting hares. There is also negative utility in the sense that alternative methods of killing them seem to be a lot worse and because many things would happen in England as a result that we would not like. First, there is utility in the reduction of crop damage. About 95 per cent. of estates allow hare hunting because hares eat an enormous amount of grass. There can be severe damage. In 2002, Tapper and Hobson, who are Game Conservancy Trust scientists, stated: 
''Hares damage crops and sometimes this can be severe, especially in horticulture. Farmers need the right to control hare numbers in these circumstances. Furthermore, some landowners will tolerate this damage if it allows them to enjoy field sports such as . . . hunting.''
 Burns acknowledges the hare's potential as an agricultural pest. He states: 
''Hares eat crops such as oilseed rape and turnip, and particularly grasses and cereals. In addition, hares can eat high value market garden crops, and will often kill newly-planted young trees and shrubs. Some of this damage can be of economic significance to individual growers . . . In arable areas high numbers of hares on winter corn are considered damaging by most cereal farmers and regular winter culls by shooting are undertaken where this occurs.''
 Five hares eat as much as a sheep, as the nibbled cereals, sugar beet and bark of young trees eloquently testify. Hares are a pest. There is no question about that. We need to control the numbers and ensure that hares are spread out to control their activity as agricultural pests. We need to control their management so that we can achieve the biodiversity action plan targets. 
 Amazingly, we also need to control numbers to prevent the spread of disease. In 1998, Professor Harris carried out a survey of natural hare deaths and found a variety of ghastly sounding—mainly because they are in Latin—diseases. The presumption is that hunting is a selective cull and will tend to take out the diseased hares. Where hunting occurs, the health of the hare population is a great deal better than it would be if there were unselective culls using guns. In 1972, some splendid scientists called Kotsche and Gottschalk came up with the definitive study of diseases among rabbits and hares. They said: 
''If there are too high a number of hares . . . in hunting districts a regular programme of control of diseased or weak stock should be carried out.''
 In that context, hunting is a selective method of control, which tends to take out the weaker and sicker hares. 
 The use of dogs for hunting hares has a variety of utilities, even though the hon. Member for Worcester straightforwardly denies that. He may believe that my arguments about the utility of hare hunting are incorrect, but I believe that they are correct. We could certainly debate them. At no stage has anybody suggested that the case is so overwhelming as to justify an outright ban on hare hunting. Some of the arguments may flow backwards and forwards. I do not know whether Gottschalk and Kotsche were right, wrong or indifferent; I am not a scientist. We should allow the registrar and the tribunal to consider the evidence carefully and come to a conclusion. The new clause would take that luxury away from them and prevent them considering whether there is utility in hare hunting. 
 The same applies to reducing suffering—the negative utility. There is less suffering involved in hunting hares with dogs than there is any available alternative method. Shooting is likely to result in a significant number of wounded hares. Organised hare shoots tend to involve large numbers of hares being shot and a significant number being wounded. The difficulty with hares is that they have 360° vision. Unlike rabbits and many other mammals, they can see all the way round. Hares are easily disturbed by dogs and if they are disturbed, they move away at speed, which makes them extraordinarily difficult to shoot cleanly. There is a high wounding rate among hares and that is why the Hares Act 1848 made it an offence for anyone to use a firearm for the purpose of killing hares at night. Foxes can be lamped, but hares cannot because it is difficult to do. 
 The other options available are snaring, which does not work, is unselective and may well be cruel, poisoning, which is illegal, and gassing, which is not illegal, but is impractical because hares tend to live above ground. So one could not gas hares easily, even if one wanted to. The only sensible option for hare control is either hunting with dogs or driven shooting. Driven shooting means that a clean kill is far from certain. Lord Burns said: 
''As far as shooting hares is concerned, we received anecdotal evidence of high wounding rates on organised shoots which would 
undoubtedly lead to poor welfare. We note that the report of the House of Lords Select Committee which was examining a coursing Bill in 1976 concluded that 'the total physical suffering caused by coursing matches is negligible compared with the suffering of hares wounded by shooting'.''
 Lord Burns seems to accept that evidence, and the same would apply to hunting hares with dogs. 
 We believe that a significant utility in beagling—hunting hares with dogs—is possible. There is real evidence that the alternative methods of killing them may have a significant welfare impact. If Government Members disagree with what I have said in detail, we need not come to a conclusion in this Committee. We do not need to come to a final decision as to whether hare hunting has utility or whether shooting hares is more or less cruel than hunting. It is not up to us to come to that conclusion. We are allowing the registrar to decide on those considerations with regard to foxhunting. Why should we not allow him to come to the same conclusions on hare hunting? 
 There is similar evidence with regard to the chase. Lord Burns was not certain that the chase was necessarily cruel. The fact is that we do not really know. There is not sufficient scientific evidence to say whether hunting hares with dogs is more or less cruel than shooting them by night—which is illegal—snaring or driven shoots. We believe that that may be more cruel, and there may be some utility in hunting. However, I am not trying to persuade the Committee of that. I am trying to persuade the Committee that the matters in question are delicate, complicated and sensitive, which we as Members of Parliament are not qualified to judge. That is why the Bill is drafted in such a way that the registrar and tribunal have an opportunity to consider the evidence from both sides of the argument in quiet circumstances. 
 That is where we stand on the argument about the cruelty and utility of hunting hares. We do not believe that there is any incontrovertible evidence—to use that immortal expression—that hunting is crueller. It is a matter of judgment and we therefore hope that the Minister and the Committee will resist new clauses 10 and 25, which are unnecessary if well meaning. 
Lembit Öpik (Montgomeryshire) rose—

James Gray: Does the hon. Gentleman wish to speak?

Lembit Öpik: That was a triumph of hope over reality, Mrs. Roe.

James Gray: The hon. Gentleman does not seem to realise that we have not yet discussed hare coursing, which is what the clause is about. It is a rather strange amalgam in a way. A variety of different things are muddled up together. I meant no disrespect to our learned advisers in saying that; I am sure that they had very good reasons for creating that grouping. None the less it is an amalgam of different subjects, which is why I am taking longer than I would have done had it been only one.

Lembit Öpik: I apologise to the hon. Gentleman. I did not realise that he was offering us an aperitif before the main course. He is right to make his points. He had two findings and a conclusion, and I drew the wrong conclusions on the basis of that.

James Gray: My father, who was a clergyman told me that all good sermons should have three points. In all good speeches, one says what one is going to say, one says it, and then one says what one has said. He says it is an aperitif. All I have had so far is the pre-dinner drinks. We shall move on shortly to the soup. He must not get too excited.

Candy Atherton: Did not the hon. Gentleman's father recommend that he keep his speeches short?

James Gray: The hon. Lady is right. My father used to say that sermons should be about three things: about Christ, about Dunblane, which is where he was a minister, and about 15 minutes. I have exceeded his limit, but that is because we are dealing with a complicated subject. I hope that he will forgive me from the grave for ignoring that advice.
 Clause 7 is about hare coursing. So far, we have been dealing exclusively with hare hunting and the illogicality at the heart of the Bill. We move now to hare coursing, which is an important subject. I pay tribute to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier), who dealt with the matter with some aplomb earlier. I shall sum up the arguments that he advanced. 
 Once again, there is a fundamental illogicality in excluding hare coursing from the subjects that can be considered by the registrar. There is no reason why organised hare coursing events such as the Waterloo cup should be banned outright when other forms of coursing remain legal. It will still be legal for an individual to use hounds or coursing dogs, under registration, to kill hares. There is nothing to stop him doing that. 
 Equally, under the exemptions in schedule 1, people may use dogs—no more than two—to flush game out of cover to a waiting gun. Even if there is reason to believe that a hare has been wounded, dogs can be used to chase it. There are plenty of circumstances in which long dogs—greyhounds, lurchers and others—will still be allowed to chase hares. Nothing has changed there. The only activity that has been stopped is the Waterloo cup. 
 Another argument blows a hole in one of the Minister's primary justifications for singling out hare coursing. He has consistently said since Second Reading—he said it again this morning—that making the Waterloo cup and similar tests illegal would make life easy for the policeman. He would know that two long dogs chasing a hare was illegal, because the Bill had made it illegal, and he could arrest the people who were involved—all nice and straightforward. 
 Of course, he is completely and utterly wrong. There are many parts of England in which I could take out my long dogs and hunt hares legally under registration, if I could demonstrate utility and least cruelty. Indeed, if I could demonstrate that I was chasing the hare towards a waiting gun, that would be legal, too, and if I could demonstrate that I believed 
 that the hare was wounded, that would be legal—I would not even need registration. 
 When a policeman sees someone chasing a hare with long dogs, he must ask an extremely complex series of questions to discover whether they were using two dogs to compete against each other, because that is illegal. Apparently, it is the competition that is illegal, not the chasing of the hare. 
 The Minister's argument about illegal coursing is incorrect. He has written into the Bill an incentive to illegal coursers—I prefer to call them poachers—to carry guns, because they will have to demonstrate that they are flushing the hare out to a waiting gun, whereas at the moment they can chase the hare with dogs. Suddenly, because of the Bill, they will have to carry a gun. Even better, if I can demonstrate that I have tried to shoot the hare but unfortunately only wounded it, I can set the dogs on it for as long as I like without applying to anyone.

Hugo Swire: Does my hon. Friend agree it is an irony that if the Bill became law it would encourage gun culture in rural areas precisely when the Government are doing everything in their power to control the misuse of guns in urban areas?

James Gray: My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point. That situation has come about only because the Minister has chosen to single out organised hare coursing events in this way. He has decided that they must be banned, but people can still register to chase hares. What if one is chasing a hare for the pot?
 The Minister has discovered the omissions only because he banned hare coursing outright, instead of saying from the start, as had been agreed at Portcullis house, that the registrar and tribunal would consider the utility and cruelty of all forms of hunting. Had he allowed organised hare coursing events to be considered in the same way as private hare coursing, which is still legal, he would have escaped from exactly the difficulties that my hon. Friend described. 
 The truth is that these parts of the Bill on hare coursing—the long title, clause 7, the exemptions in schedule 1—are an absolute muddle, on anybody's terms. That has come about simply because the Minister does not understand the difference between organised hare coursing events, private coursing on one's own land, which remains legal under registration, and the use of long dogs to chase a hare to a waiting gun, or to chase it thereafter if it is believed to be injured. The Minister does not understand the difference between those three different types of coursing. As we have demonstrated, he does not even understand the difference between coursing and hunting, which we have tried to correct in amendment No. 1. 
 That part of the Bill is a muddle and the Minister would do well to accept that and correct it. He can correct it extraordinarily simply, by setting up in the Bill a straightforward utility and cruelty test to be carried out by the registrar and tribunal. We should allow all forms of hunting—deer hunting, hare hunting, hare coursing, mink hunting and everything else—to be considered in precisely the same way by the 
 registrar. If the Minister agreed to do that, he would get himself out of his extraordinary drafting difficulties. If the Minister allows the new clause of the hon. Member for Worcester, which bans another form of hunting hares with dogs—although it is hard to tell whether it would make basset hounds illegal—that will take him into further difficulties. That highlights the fundamental illogicality in the Bill. 
 I hope that the Minister will accept amendment No. 1, which would help him out of some of his difficulties and correct the long title of the Bill, which seems to be fundamentally incorrect. I hope that he will resist new clause 10, which makes matters worse not better and is not based on any accepted judgment of utility or cruelty—if the hon. Member for Worcester thinks that it is, he should at least let the registrar and tribunal agree to that. More important, however, is the fact that the existence of clause 7 is, in itself, illogical. There is no reason to ban the Waterloo cup but allow other forms of coursing to continue, which the clause does. There is no logic in that in terms of animal welfare or, come to that, human activity. There is no logic in it at all. 
 The clause has been dictated not by animal welfare considerations but by the parliamentary Labour party. Its members have asked for some little rag to be thrown to them because they want to ban something to feel that they are true old-time socialists. The Minister has thrown them organised hare coursing, but he got in a muddle. He meant to throw them the chasing of all hares with dogs, but he has given them only organised hare coursing events. It would be much better if we allowed the registrar and tribunal to consider the relative utility and cruelty of hare coursing and I hope that he will resist new clause 10 so that the registrar and tribunal will, at least, consider the relative cruelty and utility of hare hunting. I very much hope that he will accept that clause 7 should not stand part of the Bill. It adds confusion throughout and he should allow it to be removed.

Colin Pickthall: I think that I will be able to keep to the 15-minute limit of the father of the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr. Gray), although I come from Baptist stock. When I was a boy, if the parson had kept his sermons to 15 minutes, the congregation would have asked for its collection money back. The sermon was a way of keeping the kids quiet for more than half an hour.
 I support the new clause tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester. My new clause 15 was an attempt to be more precise. It intended to refer not just to mountain hares but to the fact that it has been known for Irish hares to be imported into the west of this country for big events when hares were in short supply, although I am not saying that that is the case now. The Irish hare is a different species. However, having thought the matter through a little, I am convinced that my hon. Friend's new clause is clear and adequate and I shall not move new clause 15. 
 When I tabled that new clause, I first intended to include in it foxhunting as well as hare hunting. However, colleagues on and outside the Committee 
 have persuaded me that foxhunting is of such central and symbolic importance in the debate on hunting with dogs that it is right for the Commons as a whole to propose and dispose on it on Report. I very much agree with the speech made on Tuesday by my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Paddy Tipping) on that. 
 I know that foxhunting is at the centre of most people's concerns—I am not going to discuss it now, Mrs. Roe—whether they are against or for it. Many people refer to this, like the previous two Bills, as the foxhunting Bill, as a matter of course. They talk about foxhunting as if that is all that we are debating. My central interest, however, has always been hares. I have lived for about 35 years in an area famous for its hares and infamous for hosting the Waterloo cup and unwillingly hosting a constant problem with illegal hare coursing. The first time the matter sprang to my attention was when a large number of primary school children in a school in Upholland in my constituency were unwilling spectators of a hare being torn to bits by two lurchers in the field adjacent to their school playing fields. 
 My concern about hares—I admit my fondness for hares—grew over decades as similar illegal hare coursing episodes became known to me and as the number of hares in the district began steadily to diminish for all manner of reasons, including not only hunting and coursing but agricultural change. We have always had a problem making illegal hare coursing morally unacceptable in my area, when legal hare coursing takes place nearby. The lads who go out with the long dogs hunting hares say when challenged, ''Well, it's alright if you've got money and own a chunk of land and do it on that. We don't see what harm we're doing to the hare population that is not being done by legal hare coursing''. 
 In 1993, I introduced a ten-minute Bill to abolish hare coursing and repeated the attempt several times, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mrs. Curtis-Thomas), whose constituency borders the area of the Waterloo cup, until the cause was overtaken by the Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester a few years ago. 
 I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Minister on including hare coursing in part 1 of this Bill. When I first looked at it, I was surprised that it was included there in so stark a way, but delighted. I sometimes think that when hare coursing becomes illegal I can quietly retire—that might be an added incentive for Opposition Members to vote for it—with some satisfaction, to watch the hares in the fields outside my house. 
 There are many reasons why I have felt more strongly about the hunting, particularly the coursing, of hares than the hunting of other mammals, although I feel strongly about that as well. I have said before, so I will not repeat at great length, that hare coursing is primarily a spectator sport. It is not a pleasant one. There are unpleasant scenes among parts of the crowd. In many ways, it reminds me of bear baiting and cock fighting. The number of people actively participating is small, but the crowds can be large at the Waterloo cup and no doubt at other coursing events around the country. 
 I disagree profoundly with the hon. Member for North Wiltshire, who has said on a number of occasions that the hare is obviously a pest. The hare is not a pest. It is true that any creature—especially human beings—in the wrong place in excessive numbers can become a pest. 
 In the north-west of England, the hare is by no means a pest and I do not believe that it is a pest throughout the country. The hon. Gentleman made it clear that the hare is in the biodiversity plan, which aims to double its spring numbers by 2010. I agree that there is a tendency to use Burns like the Bible by selecting quotes from it to counter other people's quotations. Like the Bible, one can prove anything by reference to Burns. I dare say that the same might be true of the scientific evidence, which we are often enjoined to study. Scientists can also adduce evidence to prove almost any side of the argument if they try hard enough. 
 Burns clearly states that hare hunting and hare coursing are essentially carried out for recreational purposes. He states 
''There is little or no overall need to control hare numbers''.
 In relation to the pest argument, he states: 
''Hare is regarded at most as a minor agricultural pest''.
 In my admittedly anecdotal experience, in all my time in West Lancashire, which is a mecca for hare coursing, a farmer has never told me that the hare is a pest. I talk to farmers at lot because there are many of them. They openly state how much they enjoy having hares on their land. They enjoy seeing them because they are part of their lives and those of their families. The area contains A1 agricultural land, which is some of the richest in the country. The last time that I spoke to a farmer, he volunteered the information that a vast acreage of A1 agricultural land is out of action in West Lancashire because it is reserved specifically for hare coursing. The only crops grown on most of it are brassicas and brussels sprouts, which hares can hide among. 
 Both hare coursing and hare hunting fail the utility test. As they do not get past that test, I do not have to go into graphic descriptions of the cruelty argument. I have been confused by the direction in which the hon. Member for North Wiltshire is heading. On some occasions, he seems to suggest that there is an essential difference between hare coursing and hare hunting. In arguing their case to me in the past, many hare coursers have been proud of the fact that they were coursers and not hunters. 
 The hon. Gentleman said that there is not an essential difference between hunting and coursing.

James Gray: The hon. Gentleman is right that there is a degree of confusion, which is why I am arguing that members of Committee should not presume to have the solution. We should leave it to the registrar to decide whether hare coursing and hare hunting are right or wrong. I am not suggesting that I know the answer. I am simply saying that we should leave it to the registrar to find out.

Colin Pickthall: I understood the hon. Gentleman to have said that in his speech, but my starting point is that because I do not believe, and have seen no evidence to show, that the hare is a pest, there can be no utility in coursing or hunting it. Therefore, there is a logic in new clause 10 and in putting to my right hon. Friend the Minister the fact that the two activities should be bracketed in part 1 of the Bill and ruled out altogether.
 The reason for including hunting is also underlined by the numbers quoted by Burns. He reports that there are healthy hare populations in East Anglia. Hares are more prolific in some parts of the country than in others. We have seen on videos how hares are captured in parts of the country where there are still substantial numbers and transported to feed coursing needs in other areas. Burns says that 1,650 hares are killed annually by dogs in packs, compared to 250 killed by registered coursing clubs. The figure of 250 might seem low, but the argument to be set against that is that, for the animal, the activity is 100 per cent: it is still cruel, it is still unnecessary, even if we are talking about only 10 or five hares, never mind 250 or 1,650. Therefore, hare hunting fails the utility test. It is not necessary. 
 I do not want to make too much of it, but by its nature hare hunting is cruel. The hare is an animal that is unwilling to leave its territory. It often runs round and round in large figures of eight or circles when it is chased, trying to get back to its territory, until it is worn down by the dogs, which are bred for their stamina and endurance, so that they can pursue the hare until it can no longer escape. Unlike rabbits, the hare does not escape down holes. It is a surface mammal. It lives and has its being in grass. Its survival tactic, unlike the rabbit, is the quick dash. It is a very fast and powerful animal and can get away from most predators unless it is worn down by a long pursuit.

Hugo Swire: I was listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman and I think he said that hares spend the greater part of their time on grass. However, a study by Tapper and Barnes of the Game Conservancy Trust in 1986 found that hares spend around 60 per cent. of their time on arable crops, even on mixed farms where grass pasture is abundant.

Colin Pickthall: I do not dispute that. I thought that the hon. Gentleman was about to quote something that said that hares spend their time in trees. Yes, they live not just on grass but in growing crops of various kinds. That is true in my area.
 Returning to what I was saying, I am not exaggerating. If someone has different anecdotal experience, I should be pleased to hear it. I have never heard one of my farmers in a rich growing area—mostly vegetables rather than grain—complain about hares destroying crops or making a big difference to the way in which they ply their trade. 
 Burns found that hare hunts may last for up to one and a half hours. We have seen articles in hunting magazines that show that they have been recorded as passing over 16 miles. That is a long way for an animal to be chased. I do not believe that animals enjoy that and somehow produce endorphins that make them immune to pain and misery, nor do I believe arguments 
 based on anthropomorphism that a hare does not like something or likes it less than something else.

James Gray: I agree. The endorphins argument applies only at the last part of the chase, when the hare knows that it is being chased. By definition, hounds follow both foxes and hares by smell. The hare often has a lead of a mile or two miles—maybe half-an-hour ahead on a good scenting day—so that for most of the hunt the hare has no idea that it is being chased. The hounds are following the scent. The notion of chasing across country is wrong.

Colin Pickthall: That is despite the hare's 360 eyesight, which the hon. Gentleman quoted. It may be true that the hare only knows part of the way through a chase that it is being chased, but 16 miles is a long way to smell another animal, even for an intelligent dog with a good nose.

James Gray: The dog is not chasing the hare over 16 miles; it is following it over 16 miles, which is different. For a large part of the time the hare, like the fox, will graze in the middle of the hunt. The notion that it is running away, terrified of the hounds on its heels, is incorrect. Most of the hunt is done at great distances—one or two miles apart, a quarter of an hour apart. The hare, and indeed the fox, has no idea that it is being hunted until perhaps the last 10 minutes of the hunt, when the hounds start to catch up.

Colin Pickthall: Okay. Let me accept that as an argument. We are still talking about 10 minutes. A hare and a dog can run a hell of a long way in 10 minutes. I could make about 100 yd, I suppose, provided that I had a couple of rests, but a hare could make it over substantially more than a mile. I do not know. I have never measured it.
 Hare hunting takes place between September and March, because of the rules of the game. Hare coursing begins in my constituency either next week or the week after next, at the end of February. I think that the Waterloo cup is held the week after next. Many female hares are pregnant then and the evidence to Burns was that some autopsies on hares showed that they were pregnant. With strict logic, it should not be more horrific that two animals are killed rather than one, but I find it repulsive in the extreme. It undoubtedly leaves many young hares—leverets—orphaned or unable to cope and they will die as well. Again, that point is made in Burns. 
 Therefore, while I applaud my right hon. Friend for putting an outright ban on hare coursing into part 1 of the Bill, I implore him to accept the logic of new clause 10 and to include hare hunting in that ban.

Lembit Öpik: I listened with interest to the hon. Member for West Lancashire, who at one point sounded as though he was saying that he did not like hare hunting because he does not like hare coursing. However, in fairness I think that he has made it clear that he does not believe that hare hunting passes the utility test, although he conceded some points about suffering as well.
 As my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Luff) said, the Middle Way Group is not keen on hare coursing. I have not seen enough of it to draw a definitive judgment. I am an agnostic on the matter. I have not seen the Waterloo cup, as I presume other hon. Members have. I assume that the hon. Member for West Lancashire has done exactly that.

Colin Pickthall: I invite the hon. Gentleman to West Lancashire to see the Waterloo cup for himself. I am sure that he would find it interesting.

Lembit Öpik: In the spirit of genuine inquiry, it would be great to do that, assuming I can. The hon. Gentleman will know that my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire is perhaps even more sceptical about hare coursing than I am. I would like to be as open-minded as I can, see the facts and draw a conclusion. I would also like to hear in more detail his concerns about it, and those of people who are opposed to it.

James Gray: I, too, would like to come to the Waterloo cup. I have been invited to it. Unfortunately the main day occurs on the first day back after the recess, when we are sitting in Committee. I will not be able to attend, but I have not told the organisers. I look forward to attending it next year, the year after and for many years to come.

Lembit Öpik: For me, although planning is difficult, the sooner one sees it the better, because the matter is before us now. I thank the hon. Member for West Lancashire for his offer.
 I want to talk about the proposed new clauses. Although I am agnostic at present on the question of hare coursing, I am concerned that new clauses 10 and 15 would ban hare hunting, but I feel that that should be subject to the registrar's assessment of utility and suffering. Otherwise, hare hunting ends up in a rather curious position. 
 As I understand it, the Bill will regulate hare hunting, but it will not do anything to prevent killing a rabbit with dogs. I do not think that there is a sufficiently big difference between a rabbit and a hare to put them at opposite ends of the scale by which we manage the two activities. Killing a rabbit with dogs would be acceptable and, if the proposal goes through, killing a hare with dogs would be a criminal offence.

Colin Pickthall: It would be interesting for the hon. Gentleman to talk to some of the farmers who I have mentioned—I am sure that he talks to farmers in his constituency a great deal—and ask them about their views on the difference between hares and rabbits.

Lembit Öpik: There is a qualitative difference between rabbits and hares, but I am sure that most dogs would not pass a test, if forced to sit one, asking them to identify the difference. By my definition, a rabbit and a hare are not all that different in terms of intelligence and sentience. If one could run the programme ''The Weakest Link'' with hares and rabbits, it seems unlikely that rabbits would come out in an earlier round than the hares. They have
 evolved to be roughly the same in their general capabilities and moral agenda.

Peter Luff: Moral?

Lembit Öpik: As I have attracted everyone's attention, Mrs. Roe—your own eyes widened—let me concede that irony translates badly into the record of Hansard. I am not suggesting that hares or rabbits have some sort of highly sophisticated moral society involving a religious creed or anything else. Rabbits and hares probably do not pray for our souls, whatever they tend to think. However good a rabbit is at Scrabble, it would be about as good as a hare. They are equally unintelligent. I am concerned that the proposals would radically alter how we handle the two animals; there is little in nature to justify that.

James Gray: The hon. Gentleman makes an extremely important point for the following reason if no other. Under the Bill, the crime is the intent to hunt a particular species. Would he agree that if I set my dogs to chase rabbits, which would be exempt, and one of them happened to kill a hare by accident, I could use that as a defence? In other words the distinction between hares and rabbits is entirely false.

Lembit Öpik: Enforcement will be difficult. It seems unreasonable because rabbits and hares are not that different in how far they have evolved and how smart they are.

John Gummer: Earlier in our debate, the Minister was keen to point out that the issue was not the behaviour of the animals but the behaviour of human beings. Does he remember that an hon. Member who brought forward a previous Bill to ban hunting was asked on television to differentiate between one animal and another but was unable to say which was a hare and which was a rabbit? It is difficult for anyone who is not closely connected with the countryside to make the distinction.

Lembit Öpik: Two points arise. First, we should never let that hon. Member loose in a field chasing rabbits because he might suddenly take the wrong scent and attack a hare instead. Secondly, if human beings who are versed in such matters cannot tell the animals apart, it is almost certain that dogs will not make much of an effort to do so. That is a legal point that shows how difficult it would be to enforce the provision.
 An even more fundamental point is that it just does not feel right when not regulating the killing of rabbits to make the killing of a hare with intent a criminal offence. Judgments must be made. I remain agnostic on hare coursing, notwithstanding the helpful offer from the hon. Member for West Lancashire, which I shall try to accommodate, but I suggest to the hon. Member for Worcester that if there is to be a difference of judgment—it is a matter of judgment, not of principle—the onus is on him to explain why it is all right to kill rabbits without regulation when it will be a criminal offence to kill hares with dogs. It would be more sensible to leave that responsibility to the registrar, on whom rests the onus of considering utility and cruelty matters. The hon. Member for West Lancashire rightly highlighted the conservation benefit of setting aside a large area of land for hare hunting. It 
 could be argued that that meets the utility test under subsection (1)(h), which refers to 
''the biological diversity of an area''.
 There might be some equivocal evidence for benefit there, but I am not sure whether there is sufficient utility to justify it. 
 I have no vested interest in the matter, and from what I have heard from Members on both sides of the Committee, I remain unsure about what is the right thing to do. The bottom line is that it is dangerous for a Committee to ban something when the justification is inconclusive. It should be much more certain, especially when a better alternative—registration—exists. I shall be interested to hear the summation of the hon. Member for Worcester, and I praise him in advance for what I am sure will be a short summation because he spoke lucidly and clearly earlier. I hope that he will think again, not least because it is important that what comes out of this Committee is consistent and justifiable. Rabbits and hares may not have morals, but we are morally obliged to do the right thing rather than simply acting on the basis of prejudice.

Edward Garnier: I shall speak against clause stand part and, in conjunction with that, support amendment No. 1. At the outset, I shall comment briefly on new clauses 15 and 10, and particularly new clause 15, to which the hon. Member for West Lancashire spoke. I think he said that he would retire happily from the House of Commons if hare coursing were banned. His majority is 9,600, and I fear that if he bothers to stand at the next election I shall suffer the problem of not only seeing him returned as a Labour Member but also seeing hare coursing banned. I would rather have him here in the House and hare coursing continue than to have no hare coursing and the hon. Gentleman not in the House. Perhaps we could do a deal. If I could welcome him back after the next election, perhaps he could allow me to see hare coursing continue, particularly the sort of hare coursing that happens in his own constituency on the Altcar estate.
 I shall briefly make another point about the hon. Gentleman's comments. It applies equally to the new clause of the hon. Member for Worcester. They are creating statute by mission creep, which is not a good way to create law. Within the confines of our discussion, I could cope with this Government-produced Bill. I give the Minister the benefit of the doubt and assume that he thought about what he is trying to do, and that he has a policy in his head that he is trying to turn into black-letter law. The Minister and his advisers must have reached a conclusion about how the Bill would be best designed and how it would best achieve the purposes and the policy that he outlined in his speech on Second Reading. 
 It must be difficult for the Government when no doubt well-meaning Back Benchers try to bolt their own ideas on to a Bill that already has a shape and a pattern, because it unbalances the Bill and throws into some confusion the orderly progress of the Bill through the House of Commons and the other place. I urge the Minister, whatever he may think about the 
 merits of the arguments for new clauses 10 and 15, not to allow the Bill to be amended in the way that has been advanced by his two hon. Friends for that very practical procedural reason. To amend the Bill so fundamentally would create more problems than it would solve, and would also fly in the face of the certainly legitimate expectations of those who disagree with the Minister, the Government and those who want to ban hunting about how the Bill, which was predicated on a licensing basis, would be developed. For those reasons, I urge the Minister and other members of the Committee to treat very warily on new clauses 10 and 15. 
 It has been said on several occasions by the hon. Member for West Lancashire that perhaps a better place to have these discussions is on the Floor of the House on Report, since the membership of the House of Commons has expressed a view, and it should have the final say on the matter. Sometimes the argument is expressed along the lines that we must not delegate functions of the House to a registrar, but the House spends its whole time delegating powers to other people, most often at the request of the Minister to whom the power is to be delegated. I have not heard many objections from Government Members when a Henry VIII clause is added to a Bill. 
 Therefore, I urge the Minister not to allow himself to be seduced by that argument because, apart from anything else, the way in which we make laws is not through the House of Commons only but through both Houses sequentially, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) has said on previous occasions. Each House advises the other of its opinion, and both Houses eventually come to some agreement on the best shape, form or detail of a particular statute. We have parliamentary laws, not House of Commons laws. 
 I hope that the Minister will not be seduced into thinking that the matter is at an end simply because the House of Commons has reached a conclusion. I am not sure that even the House of Commons has reached the conclusion about hare hunting that was put forward when the two new clauses were introduced. 
 I shall return briefly to the general issue of hare coursing. We have discussed it on previous days and also this morning when my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire and I dealt with our respective amendments. I note that the hon. Member for West Lancashire has temporarily left the Room. He gave me the impression—I do not know whether other hon. Members got the same impression—that his concerns about Waterloo cup hare coursing are twofold. First, there is his belief that it is distasteful and, secondly, there is the thought of public order problems. Many things that are done by people in this country are distasteful, but we do not pass laws about them.

Tony Banks: Yes we do.

Edward Garnier: I agree that we do sometimes, but perhaps we should not. The fact that we made a
 mistake does not mean that we should repeat it. There are distasteful and so-called immoral activities that are not illegal. [Interruption.] As my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal says from a sedentary position, perhaps the Bill puts us in danger of making it compulsory.
 Public order can be dealt with by existing public order law. People may behave in an unruly fashion, cause disturbances and get drunk or they may be guilty of illegal gambling or other forms of antisocial behaviour, but we do not need to ban hare coursing to eradicate that sort of behaviour at coursing events. I would far rather that clause 7 were not in the Bill. My arguments refuting the points about distaste and public order might go by the way anyhow, because hare coursing will become illegal and therefore, we assume, will not happen any more. 
 I remind the Minister that he has often argued that by including clause 7 in the law of England and Wales, he will make the life of the police a lot easier and prevent illegal hare coursing. That argument is fallacious and spurious. As I am sure that the Minister, as a former Home Office Minister, knows, there simply are not sufficient police to do the work that will be required of them if what is now legitimate hare coursing continues and the hundreds of people who attend the Waterloo cup attend. Such counties do not have the busloads of policemen and women necessary to round those people up. There are not enough police available, unless they just go in and snatch one or two people and make an example of them.

Tony Banks: Why?

Edward Garnier: Why? Because the Government have not—

Tony Banks: I should never have said that, should I? It was not what I meant. I will not let the hon. and learned Gentleman leave that on the record. He is presupposing that when something is banned, the same number of people will turn up to continue what is now an illegal pursuit and will become lawbreakers. That will not be the situation. If the police can find the numbers to police football matches, they can certainly police illegal hare coursing.

Edward Garnier: Professional football matches tend to take place in big urban areas. I know what division Chelsea is in, but I do not know what division West Ham is in. In the event that they are both at the top of the premier league—[Interruption.] I am happy for others to carry on a conversation about football, but I am trying to deal with the hon. Gentleman's intervention about policing. The police force in Greater London—the Metropolitan police—is measured in tens of thousands. I think that the figure is 30,000. The police force in Leicestershire consists of about 800 or 900 people.

Andy Reed: Two thousand one hundred.

Edward Garnier: That is massively smaller. I do not know the size of the Lancashire police force. Let us not get too hung up on individual figures. The point is that in rural areas there are not the numbers to police these
 activities. I accept the general point made by the hon. Member for West Ham (Mr. Banks), who said that once coursing is made illegal there will not be the same numbers going to the Waterloo cup because it will not be held. None the less, the Minister still seems to think that outlawing hare coursing under clause 7 will make the life of the police a lot easier. At the moment, the police do not have to police the Waterloo cup or lawful hare coursing and they will not have to police it once it is absent, if the hon. Member for West Ham is right.

John Gummer: Will my hon. and learned Friend underline how sparse police cover in rural areas is? During the last bank holiday weekend there were 14 police officers to cover the huge rural area of my constituency and half the next-door one. On a similar day, one of my constituents was hit on the head and the police did not have the manpower to come, and admitted that they did not, even though his assailant was outside the door of his house.

Edward Garnier: I know that my right hon. Friend will not agree with me, but he is lucky. As I have told the Committee on a number of occasions, on a Friday and Saturday evening there are often no more than three police officers on duty in rural Harborough, to cover an area of several hundred square miles. His example is clearly right for his area, but the position is further exacerbated in mine.
 There is no question of hare coursing of the sort that takes place at the Waterloo cup being equated with hare hunting with beagles or bassets or with the sort of foxhunting that we have discussed. It is predominantly, if not exclusively, a recreational activity. People do not attend coursing events to take part in the hunt; they go to watch dogs being tested against each other. We should more readily compare it to horse racing, field trials or even fishing than to other forms of hunting. It is interesting that we have debated hare hunting under new clauses 10 and 15, but that is a wholly separate activity from Waterloo cup hare coursing. To remark that we cannot have hare coursing because it does not comply with the utility tests, while interesting, is not relevant. Coursing is essentially a recreational activity so its utility is not in pest control or the things listed in clause 8(1). 
 Government Members have made it clear that they do not want recreation or sport to be accepted as a utility under clause 8 for other hunting activities, but I do not even need to go to clause 8 to defend hare coursing because it is a wholly separate kind of activity. Albeit that it is primarily a sporting activity, it is none the less highly regulated. One does not have to look far into the history of the National Coursing Club, the governing body of hare coursing, to see how effective and how respected it is in controlling and disciplining the sport. As we have seen from the NCC's activities in the past several years, every time that it has found that its activities need modernisation, to use the current jargon, it has modernised them. It has been hugely receptive to adapting the rules to changing circumstances. 
 People may have had different animal welfare standards and a different understanding of the ways in which man and beast relate to each other in the 19th 
 century and the NCC has moved with the times. If public opinion, Parliament or official inquiries have made suggestions or criticisms, the NCC has adapted the rules to meet those.

Colin Pickthall: Has the hon. and learned Gentleman come across the news item this week on the Yeovil and Sherborne coursing club? It has decided to switch its coursing so that it does not use live hares but carries out a form of drag coursing. I understand that it has done that because of the lack of hares in the area and because it finds that drag coursing, in which an imitation hare is wired up to the axle of a car on blocks, attracts more people. It comes to a satisfactory end and betting can take place, whereas if the activity takes place with too few hares it collapses without a result. Does the hon. and learned Gentleman think that the National Coursing Club, in the modernisation programme that he is describing, might adopt that idea?

Edward Garnier: The NCC may well do so, I do not know. No doubt, as the representative of the constituency containing Altcar, the hon. Gentleman is in close touch with the NCC and will put that suggestion to it. I have not heard of the Yeovil and Sherborne club, which I assume is in Somerset, a little way from his constituency. His suggestion is valid but as drag hunting is not an adequate, exact or proper replacement for foxhunting I hesitate to suggest that mechanical hare coursing would meet all the criticisms made.
 That is certainly an interesting idea and I would not reject it out of hand but I do not know enough about the mechanics—it sounds rather like launching a glider with a tractor engine. I do not know the practicalities, what is required or how the noise of the machine would affect the greyhounds' performance. Those are matters for conjecture but I am sure that they could be verified if the hon. Gentleman got into contact with the people he mentions. I imagine that he has produced an item from an internet news service or a newspaper clipping. The derivation of his intervention is not clear, but that may not matter because it is not entirely germane to my arguments. 
 I remind the Committee that the sport of coursing has been the subject of four inquiries since the second world war: the Scott Henderson inquiry of 1951, the Stable and Stuttard inquiry of 1971, the House of Lords Select Committee inquiry in 1976 and this Government's inquiry under Lord Burns a year or so ago. The 1976 House of Lords Committee report changed the face of modern coursing. As a result of its recommendations, the law given to the hare before the dogs were released—the gap between the hounds that are to be slipped and the hare that is to be caught—was increased from 60 to 80 yd by the NCC. The NCC stewards, known after the Lords report as coursing inspectors, assumed a prominent role in ensuring that all the rules, particularly those relating to the welfare of the hare, were strictly observed at all of its affiliated meetings. 
 I accept that there may be unlawful hare coursing events, which are not under the NCC's control and are held without its knowledge. If that is the case, it is to be deprecated because those events will not be 
 controlled, regulated and carried out in the disciplined circumstances of official events such as the Waterloo cup. 
 I have no problem with the police, if they can find the time, energy and resources, dealing with people who illegally course hares at present. I have no problem with the police finding, if they can, people who intimidate landowners, land managers and farmers into allowing them to course on their land. I have no problem with the police protecting the innocent against the activities of the violent, or arresting those who are drunk and disorderly, unlawfully gambling or making a general nuisance of themselves to the concern of other law-abiding members of the public. I am concerned about the statutory mission creep that has been discussed in relation to hare hunting and the wholesale outlawing of currently lawful hare coursing.

Hugo Swire: Does my hon. and learned Friend share a feeling that the Government and the Minister have inadvertently got organised coursing in their sights when they were aiming at something quite different? Can he think of another similar organisation in any sphere in this country that has responded time and again to every inquiry in the responsible manner that the National Coursing Club has? At times, it has gone beyond what it was invited to do.

Edward Garnier: I accept the thrust of what my hon. Friend said in the first half of his remarks. In relation to whether other bodies have done more than it was asked. The Jockey Club or the British Boxing Board of Control—I do not know anything about boxing—are two other bodies that have been hugely responsive to public pressure and public opinion. Whether they have done so successfully is a matter of opinion. The NCC cannot claim to be the only body susceptible to public opinion, or the only body that has changed its rules to reflect changing circumstances. In so far as I am talking about hare coursing, as opposed to boxing or horse racing, it is true that the NCC has bent over backwards to ensure that the activities of its members are properly controlled and regulated.
 I come back to where I began—to the central problem with such debates. The hon. Member for West Lancashire finds hare coursing distasteful and on that basis thinks that it should be banned. I dare say that there are others on the Committee who share his views. I do not find it distasteful as long as it is properly controlled and regulated, any more than I find foxhunting or stag hunting distasteful. I am prepared to defend them as best I can with what limited resources I have available. 
 We reach an impasse where the might of the majority will snuff out the rights of the minority. The liberties of the minority go by the board simply because the other side of the argument knows and believes it is right and knows and believes it has the might to impose its will on the minority. That is a problem all minorities have when the majority in a parliamentary democracy has reached a conclusion. 
 Whether it has thought about the conclusion makes no difference to the victims of the parliamentary decision. 
 I urge hon. Members before they vote for clause 7 to think carefully about what they are doing to the standing of Parliament and the standing in which a new aspect of the criminal law will be viewed by those upon whom it will be visited. We all want good, simple, well-constructed law. I am doubtful that clause 7 adds to the reputation of the Government or of those who find hunting and coursing distasteful. I urge them to hold their judgments until the matter has been more thoroughly investigated.

Alun Michael: Before I respond to the debate, I promised to provide the Committee with my exchange of correspondence with Professor Patrick Bateson, whose letter referred to the misapprehension that I had referred to his evidence—the findings of his research—as incontrovertible. I have, as I did on Tuesday, referred to the case for banning deer hunting as incontrovertible. Professor Bateson's evidence was and is important, but so is other evidence and, in particular, the fact that an alternative to hunting with dogs is always available.
 It is important to note that in Professor Bateson's e-mail to me today, in which he gave permission for the exchange to be passed to others, he corrects some elements in yesterday's press reports and confirms his views, as quoted by me to the Committee on Tuesday.

James Gray: I have a copy of the letter here. Will the Minister acknowledge that in it Professor Bateson says:
''I would not have suggested''—
 that there could possibly be incontrovertible evidence— 
''that there were matters to settle. . . . it is obvious that to controvert a conclusion with an alternative explanation isn't to say that the alternative explanation is necessarily correct.''
 The letter substantially backs up what Professor Bateson originally said, which is that there is no such thing as incontrovertible evidence. The Minister is wrong.

Alun Michael: No, it says no such thing. Other people will be able to read it and see that it does not say what the hon. Gentleman says. I never said that the evidence was incontrovertible. I said that the argument was incontrovertible. [Hon. Members: ''Ah!'']

Alun Michael: That is exactly what I said on Tuesday. If Committee members look at the definition of incontrovertible in the Oxford English Dictionary, they will see that Malthus used it in 1817 to say:
''The increase of population since 1780 is incontrovertible.''
 The fact that the earth is not flat, I suggest, is incontrovertible. Of course there are people who argue against it. Professor Bateson says that those who support the continuation of hunting have controverted what he said. In that sense, it is possible to mount an argument against it. 
 I stand by what I said, which is that I believe the argument for banning hunting to be incontrovertible. That is what I said on Tuesday. It is what I have said previously. It is clear that, in putting a view to 
 Professor Bateson, people had used those words in a different sense. What he responded to was not what I had said. I make that clear in my letter to him as well.

John Gummer: Can the Minister explain what type of argument would be incontrovertible when the evidence was controvertible? He cannot suggest to us that he has in any way ameliorated the position by putting the word ''incontrovertible'' with something else. In fact he has made it worse. He is saying that his argument is based on evidence that is clearly not incontrovertible but, because it is his argument, it is incontrovertible. He is saying again, ''This is right because I say it's right, and I'm infallible''. It is a very odd argument.

Alun Michael: That is a very odd argument and it is not one that I have used. Professor Bateson's evidence is extremely important and influential and should be taken seriously. In addition to the evidence available from him, I called in aid on Tuesday the fact that there is always an alternative means of dealing with deer that is less cruel—stalking and shooting. That is what leads me to the conclusion that the argument for banning deer hunting is incontrovertible and I stand by that. I did not say that a piece of evidence—

Marion Roe: Order. I remind hon. Members that we are debating a clause about the banning of hare coursing and hare hunting. I have been tolerant because a new paper has been presented, but I would like to get back to what is before us now. There has been an opportunity for points to be raised. Please let us discuss the clause before us and not what was before the Committee on Tuesday.

James Gray: On a point of order, Mrs. Roe. Perhaps I can help you slightly. In Professor Bateson's new letter, which I have in front of me, he refers not only to the hunting of deer but to the hunting of all animals. He uses his argument on incontrovertible evidence in relation to other species of animals. Therefore, his evidence is extremely pertinent to hunting hares.

Marion Roe: We are debating clause 7, which is about hare coursing and hare hunting. I ask Members to concentrate on what is before the Committee at this moment.

Alun Michael: Having succeeded in setting the record straight, despite the efforts of the hon. Member for North Wiltshire to take us down the wrong course, I shall obey your injunction, Mrs. Roe.

Gregory Barker: On a point of order, Mrs. Roe. I understand your stricture, but can you not understand the strong feeling on this side of the Committee that we will miss the opportunity to give voice to our thoughts about the letter? It is clear that the Minister hopes to suppress it and sneak it out at some point.

Marion Roe: That is not relevant to what is before the Committee at this moment. I have been tolerant in allowing mention of things that are obviously of concern to both sides of the Committee, but I now ask hon. Members to concentrate on the matter before us.

Alun Michael: Further to that point of order, Mrs. Roe. I wish to obey your injunction, but you will appreciate that on Tuesday some Opposition Members sought to impugn my reputation and succeeded in getting stories in the newspapers, which was what they
 wanted. Today, they seek further to undermine my reputation and that of a distinguished academic who has made his position very clear and reinforced the views that he expressed in July and that I discussed on Tuesday. I simply want to get that straight and on the record before moving on.

Marion Roe: I believe that that has been done and I ask Members to concentrate on the clause that is before us.

Alun Michael: Thank you, Mrs. Roe.

Lembit Öpik: Will the Minister give way?

Alun Michael: As I have not yet started, it is difficult to understand what would cause me to give way, other than the possibility that there is something else that might incur the wrath of the Chairman, but I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman.

Lembit Öpik: I am grateful to the Minister. I wanted to make this point at the beginning of his remarks and I hope that he will be able to comment on it without going through the whole debate again.
 We discussed incontrovertible evidence in a different context, but an interesting statement in the letter that seems relevant to this debate is that 
''a political solution should involve some kind of cost-benefit analysis''.
 Ignoring the references to deer but taking the more general principle in the letter, would the Minister respond to what seems a caution from an academic that we should not necessarily assume that there is incontrovertible evidence? To me, that mitigates in favour of allowing the registrar to examine the evidence on hare hunting and so on.

Alun Michael: The hon. Gentleman adds to the discussion that was taking place earlier about hare hunting and hare coursing. It is right to ban hare coursing completely because it can never meet the tests. As the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) said only a few minutes ago, its purpose is recreation. It tests and compares the skill, speed and agility of two dogs. It is not about controlling or eradicating pests. That is why hare coursing should be dealt with in this way.
 I wanted to begin my comments by dealing with the suggestion of the hon. Member for North Wiltshire that we should amend the long title of the Bill. Much of his expansion was based on a simple misunderstanding of the English language and the meaning of some simple words in English law. Let us consider the long title: 
''A Bill to make provision about hunting wild mammals with dogs; to prohibit hare coursing; and for connected purposes.''
 It is important to note that hunting refers to the hunting of wild mammals with dogs, not the hunting of wild mammals by dogs. There is no doubt that a dog is hunting the hare in a coursing event. The purpose of the human activity is not hunting but the comparison of the two animals. That is what makes the difference and that is why, when we drew up the Bill, I was advised that coursing did not fall within the definition of hunting with animals. It may fall within the definition of hunting by animals, but it does not 
 fall within the definition of the activity with which we seek to deal. 
 If we take the suggestion made by the hon. Member for North Wiltshire, the long title will refer merely to making provision about hunting wild mammals with dogs. That would cast doubt on the legitimacy of the provisions contained in the clause, which prohibits hare coursing events, because they would be outside the scope of the Bill, given that coursing events are not covered by the definition of hunting in clause 45(2). I do not want to labour that point; it is simple and I have made it on a number of occasions.

James Gray: The Minister made an extremely important and most interesting point. Despite seven years at university, I had some difficulty following what he was saying. He seemed to suggest that hare coursing was hunting by dogs, whereas other forms of hunting, such as foxhunting, were hunting with dogs. Will he expand that and make it absolutely plain precisely what he meant? What is the difference between hunting by dogs and hunting with dogs?

Alun Michael: I shall take a deep breath and read the long title to the hon. Gentleman again. It states that the Bill is to
''Make provision about hunting wild mammals with dogs; to prohibit hare coursing; and for connected purposes.''
 The Bill governs hunting wild mammals with dogs. On a number of occasions, the hon. Member for North Wiltshire seems to have become confused. He has said, ''When you have a hare coursing event, the dog is hunting the animal, so coursing is hunting.'' Well, the dog is hunting the animal, but the human beings are comparing the skills and agility of the two animals in the competition. I thought that my point was simple; I hope that I have managed to convey it to the hon. Gentleman.

James Gray: If it could be proved that a master of foxhounds was concerned not with catching the fox, but with comparing the relative skill and ability of the hounds, would he be exempt in the same way as slippers and the people running coursing events?

Alun Michael: The hon. Gentleman is adopting a reductio ad absurdum approach. The whole point is that it is of the essence of hunting to catch and kill the prey, whereas it is of the essence of hare coursing to make a comparison. That has been said on many occasions. People do not seek to catch the prey; the speed and agility of the dogs is the issue. The hon. and learned Member for Harborough correctly referred to coursing as recreation.
 Incidentally, the hon. and learned Gentleman also referred to the pressures on the police service. It may be interesting for the Committee to note that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Mr. Reed) pointed out to me earlier, there are 300 more police available for beat duties in Leicestershire than there were in 1997. Rural police forces receive about £30 million from a fund that was established following research to consider the needs of rurality. 
 [Interruption.] My hon. Friends tempt me, but modesty forbids me from saying that I established the research. Subsequent Ministers provided the money and I thoroughly support their action. 
 In effect, hare coursing is a subset of hare hunting. A hare coursing event is strictly defined in the Bill. Crucially, in a hare coursing event, the people conducting, participating or attending the event are not hunting, although the dogs, following their natural instincts, are. That is why a separate definition is required to bring those people within the ambit of the law. There is no confusion in the law as drafted, but there is clearly some confusion in Opposition Members' minds. As I indicated in some of the discussions at Portcullis house, despite the clarity of the definition that I used, which was eventually drafted in the Bill and used for organisations such as the National Coursing Club, there still seems to be a certain amount of confusion in people's minds about what is permitted and what is not. 
 We have been through the argument about hare coursing as defined in the Bill several times. Hare coursing has no utility. Those who engage in it say that it is to test the speed and the agility of the two dogs competing against each other. They will have to find other ways of testing those skills that do not involve chasing wild mammals across a field and sometimes killing them. We are told that there is utility in the higher number of hares that exist and would not exist if hare coursing came to an end. The hon. Member for North Wiltshire made considerable play of that argument in the opening debate. Hare numbers might be kept artificially high in certain areas to facilitate the activity, but surely that is no reason to maintain an unnecessary and cruel activity. Perhaps the most telling piece of evidence is that given in paragraph 6.68 of the Burns report: 
''if the dog or dogs catch the hare, they do not always kill it quickly. There can also sometimes be a significant delay, in ''driven'' coursing, before the ''picker up'' reaches the hare and dispatches it (if it is not already dead). In the case of ''walked up'' coursing, the delay is likely to be even longer.''
 To press for the removal of hare coursing from the list of activities that are prohibited is to misunderstand the principles on which the legislation is based. The intention is to eliminate cruelty, certainly not to protect activities that have no utility and which involve cruelty. I am not prepared to condone chasing, and sometimes killing, wild mammals for sport alone, which is what the amendment invites me to do. 
 We come now to new clause 10. When we have discussed hare coursing in previous debates, Conservative Members have made great play of the perception, to which I have referred, that there is confusion in the Bill about different types of coursing and hare hunting and what the Bill will allow and what it will not. One activity, hare coursing events, is banned and another, hare hunting might be allowed if it passes the two tests. They have claimed consistently that there is some fuzziness between whether an activity is coursing or hunting. 
 The Bill is clear, but I am conscious that it is important for the law to be understood. The Bill bans 
 outright hare coursing events, in clause 7, but makes the continuation of hare hunting subject to two tests. To avoid confusion it is important to distinguish between hare coursing events and hare hunting. Hare coursing events are defined in clause 7(3) as competitions 
''in which dogs are, by the use of live hares, assessed as to skill in hunting hares.''
 No person is engaged, so it is not hunting with dogs, as defined in clause 45(2). By contrast, hare hunting, which has been referred to in Committee by the colloquial term hare coursing, involves a person engaging in the pursuit of hares and employing dogs in that pursuit. That is clearly hunting. 
 We discussed at length the two tests set out in clause 8. Where the evidence is incontrovertible that an activity can meet the test, it will be exempted—ratting and rabbiting fall into that category—and where an activity cannot meet the test it will be banned. Deer hunting and hare coursing events fall into that category. Clearly, hare coursing events cannot meet the test of utility. I have reflected on the discussions that we have had in Committee on the hunting of hares and revisited the evidence in the light of new clause 10. All three of the main campaigning groups, the Campaign for the Protection of Hunted Animals, the Middle Way Group and the Countryside Alliance requested that I took the Burns report as the starting point of my considerations. That is what I have done. 
 Burns found that there is little or no need to control overall hare numbers. Paragraph 5.94 states 
''Hare hunting and coursing are essentially carried out for recreational purposes''.
 The reasons for hare population management are 
''Damage to agriculture and forestry''
 according to paragraph 5.81 and, in paragraph 5.83, 
''to deter poaching and coursing''.
 Conversely, according to paragraph 5.82 
''hare numbers are maintained at high levels for organised shooting.''
 In the light of other methods used to deal with hare numbers, including shooting and snaring and netting, Burns notes that nobody argues that hunting has an appreciable effect on hare numbers as he estimates at paragraph 5.89 hunts kill only 1,650 hares per season, whereas, he says in paragraph 5.85, 
''It is estimated that some 200,000–300,000 hares are shot in Britain each year.''
 So, an outright ban on hare hunting 
''would have no direct impact in practice on hare numbers.''
 That was his conclusion in paragraph 5.91. Burns goes on to say in paragraph 6.69 
''In the event of a ban on hunting and coursing hares, it seems likely that a few more would be shot than at present. There are concerns about the welfare implications of shooting hares because of wounding rates.''
 However, the position is that 200,000 to 300,000 hares are shot in Britain each year. More responsible shooting must be encouraged and the British Association for Shooting and Conservation is continually seeking to do. That can deal with that concern. 
 The Committee is familiar with the two tests for registration. First, the activity must have utility, as is set out in clause 8(1), to protect livestock and crops, for example. Secondly, the least suffering test in clause 8(2) as amended by the Committee can be passed only where the proposed hunting is 
''likely to cause significantly less pain, suffering or distress to the wild animals to be hunted''
 than would be likely to be caused by any other reasonably available method to achieve the same contribution to pest control in an area. 
 Therefore, the arguments about hare hunting are more finely balanced than those concerning other species that we have debated. I have set out the facts and provided the Committee with the Burns report's conclusions. I ask hon. Members to consider whether hare hunting could ever pass one or both of the tests. If not, the new clause could be supported. It would certainly eliminate the possibility of doubt to which the hon. Member for North Wiltshire referred.

James Gray: I will understand at least if the Minister seeks to ban hare hunting outright. That will be a matter for him. However, he must not blame something that I have said for allowing that to happen.

Alun Michael: I remain convinced that, as the Bill is drafted, the law is clear. What the hon. Gentleman has said time and again—I make no stronger point than this—is that it is not, and would not, be clear to people what was being banned. He suggested that there was confusion between hare hunting and hare coursing. During the discussions in Portcullis house, some people came up to me to discuss the common English meanings of the words ''hunting'' and ''coursing''. I made it clear, and sought to make it clear in the Bill, the meaning of coursing that I take to be correct. I make the distinction between hunting and coursing in the Bill. However, I do understand the hon. Gentleman's argument.

James Gray: The Minister has misquoted the argument entirely. At no stage have I suggested any confusion between hare coursing and hare hunting. In any event, one is done by long dogs—greyhounds, which are great big, tall dogs—and the other is done by beagles, which are small, fat dogs. The Minister has probably never seen either, but the two are entirely different. I have never suggested any confusion between coursing and hunting. I have said that there is confusion between organised hunting competitions, which are banned, and other hunting that uses long dogs, which is still allowed. No confusion exists between beagling and coursing. The two are totally and utterly different.

Alun Michael: Hon. Members have heard the discussion as much as I have. I thought that I heard the hon. Gentleman say on several occasions that there was confusion between the two.

James Gray: You were not listening.

Alun Michael: I was listening carefully. I am certainly keen to avoid any doubt in the Bill. I ask hon. Members, who have heard the discussion, to make up their own minds as to whether there is the possibility of confusion. It would be most unfortunate
 if people were as confused and doubtful as the hon. Gentleman seemed to be in his earlier contributions.

James Gray: It is not unreasonable for the Minister to say that he wishes to allow his hon. Friends to ban beagling, which has been going on for hundreds of years. I do not agree with him, but it is a reasonable thing to do. However, to try to pray in aid the fact that he has misquoted me on the confusion that exists between coursing and beagling is disgraceful. If he wants to ban hare hunting, he must say so, but to blame me shows how hollow and shallow his arguments really are.

Alun Michael: The hon. Gentleman doth protest too much. Time and again, he has made much of the potential for confusion between coursing and hunting, but he now seeks to resile from that position. As far as I am concerned, there is a clear legal definition, but I understand hon. Members' concerns about hare hunting. The evidence in Burns is finely balanced, although other elements point clearly in one direction or the other. Hon. Members will have to make up their own minds about whether to support the new clause.
 New clause 15, in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire, has a similar aim to new clause 10. However, I am advised that it is not necessary to add the words ''of any species'' in relation to hares to achieve his objective. Indeed, it could, inadvertently, give rise to confusion about the scope of those provisions in the Bill that refer simply to hares.

Colin Pickthall: I expressed my intention not to press new clause 15.

Alun Michael: I am grateful to my hon. Friend and I will not labour the point further.

Lembit Öpik: What is so different about rabbits and hares in welfare or sentient terms? Why is he happy for the killing of rabbits with dogs to be unregulated when he wants to make it a criminal offence to do exactly the same thing to a very similar animal in similar circumstances?

Alun Michael: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for bringing me to that point. It is a fair question and I have considered it on several occasions during this process. There are two differences. First, hare coursing, in its illegal and legal manifestations, exists in several parts of the country. It is a significant activity, which had to be taken into consideration and dealt with in the Bill. The hon. Gentleman may remember that my original letter asked for people's views on whether the Bill should deal with hare coursing as well as hunting, and the conclusion from the evidence that came in was that it should. The second difference is one that we have encountered today. Having concluded that hare coursing cannot pass the tests and should be banned outright, one must look at the relationship between it and hare hunting, and that is the essence of our debate.
 On the hon. Gentleman's question about the difference between rabbit hunting and hare hunting, first, as regards utility, rabbits are a pest in most parts 
 of the country. Hares are rarely a pest, although they can be in localised areas. There are, however, alternative methods of dealing with them and shooting is used to a far greater extent. A few moments ago, I gave figures to demonstrate that shooting is used to deal with the hare as a pest in most circumstances. 
 Secondly, on suffering, on average rabbits weigh much less than hares. As suggested in the evidence, the suffering caused relates to the speed with which the quarry is dealt with and is much less for lighter animals. Rabbits are chased and caught very quickly, whereas hares are chased for much longer. Those are the differences. As I said a few moments ago, hare hunting should be allowed and should be part of the registration process, but the issue is finely balanced. Our discussion about the distinction between hare coursing and hare hunting and the way in which the two are dealt with has brought out the issues very well.

John Gummer: I am interested to hear what the Minister has said. Perhaps we can put it in the context of his speeches over several years. Various speeches in Committee Rooms during previous Bills showed that he was opposed, not on a fine principle or on a narrow point but fundamentally, to any kind of hunting. He then produced this Bill, which he suggested could bring people together. He said that it was based on a logical foundation—originally he called it a moral foundation, but I notice that that has been largely dropped. On that basis, he has asked us to get rid of hare coursing because it does not fit his particular definition—his two criteria—but he agreed to allow the registrar to make decisions on hare hunting. Now, after a debate in which some of the problems that were self-evident from the beginning have been teased out, he has told his supporters that if they want to ban hare hunting as well, they can.
 The Minister has given the impression that he has been moved by the logic of the debate. He must forgive me if I say that that impression goes down ill, given that he has not been moved by any of the logic of any part of the debate until now. The only time that he is moved by the logic of the debate is when the majority is behind it. When he knows that he is not going to win the vote, he becomes emollient. When he knows that he is going to win the vote, any snide remark is suitable—any comment that belittles people standing up for something that they have done for generations is perfectly acceptable. 
 However, the moment that the Minister is faced with a Back Bench of Members determined to ban hare hunting, he begins to say, ''Well, I was never entirely for this anyway. I wasn't absolutely on the button; it was a narrowly run thing''. He then presents evidence from Lord Burns, which he must have known about—he must have read that document again and again—putting it in a form that is wholly different from the way that he has previously discussed it in the House or the Committee. He must forgive me if I think that this is a put-up job. I do not think that he had any intention of doing anything else from the time when he launched the Bill. This is just what he was going to do. If he thought that he could get the same result on 
 foxhunting, I would not be surprised at how much the evidence could begin to move him. 
 The Minister has shown the same pattern time and again. You promise to listen to the debate. You have three days of discussion. Certain incontrovertible facts come out of that discussion on which everyone agrees. You then produce a Bill that does not reflect that discussion or those incontrovertible facts. When you have evidence of any kind—

Alun Michael: On a point of order, Mrs. Roe. Can we be clear to whom the right hon. Gentleman is speaking? It appears to be the gallery rather than the Committee.

Marion Roe: We do not refer to the gallery.

John Gummer: I notice that the Minister, as always happens when one gets close to the truth, is beginning to get cross. The truth is very clear. At every stage in this Bill, and particularly now, when we are discussing hare hunting and coursing, he has tried to give the impression that he is going down the middle in some way, trying to bring people together, asking for rational support, but never, never being prepared to move in any direction except that of the majority of his own Back Benchers. I have sat on Committees for many years, but I have never seen a way of presenting a Bill such as this—so we are faced with the issue.
 The reason why the debate has gone as it has is that a group of people are determined not to listen to the majority of British people who do not wish to ban hunting and make it a criminal offence, not to listen to the evidence and not to listen to country people and those who hunt. They simply wish to press home their prejudiced view. The Minister has delicately led them along, quietly moving the goalposts, making it possible and choreographing it elegantly. I congratulate him. My goodness, he has done it beautifully, but he has done it despicably. 
 The Minister has asked us to allow all kinds of freedoms for people to do things that we find abhorrent. We have seen all sorts of changes in the law, and I voted for some of them: I voted for people being allowed to do things that I find abhorrent. In this case, because the Minister is now moved by the arguments and by a re-reading of Lord Burns' report, he will say that hare hunting could also, by the will of the majority of the Committee, be banned. The world outside sees through that; the world outside knows precisely what it is about. It is about another mechanism to ensure that the prejudiced, illiberal and largely ignorant views of those who hate hunting are accepted. The Minister will have manoeuvred it in the way that he intended in the first instance.

Michael Foster: I want to take a couple of minutes to comment on the debate so far and on new clause 10, which I do not intend to press to a vote.
 I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire. Nobody in the House has worked harder on the issue of hares. When the day comes that hare coursing and, I hope, hare hunting no longer take place in this country, no one will deserve more credit than him for the work that he has done. 
 The same old argument was made in defence of hare hunting as it was of foxhunting. It goes along the following lines: we must hunt hare with dogs to protect the species and maintain the quality of the hares running wild. I could understand that argument if we were trying to ban the activity that kills between 200,000 and 300,000 hares a year. I cannot for the life of me accept the same argument for 1,650 hares. It is nonsense; it is absolute rubbish. Anybody who can spend so much time saying such utter rubbish wastes the time of the Committee and the House. It is just a joke. 
 It has been claimed that hunting with dogs is the way to protect this wonderful species of hare, when it is acknowledged that in five days' hunting only two hares are killed. It beggars belief that such a claim has been made.

James Gray: At no stage in my speech this afternoon on this subject did I necessarily try to persuade the hon. Gentleman of the utility or least cruelty of hunting hares. I sought to persuade him that it was not right for that to be decided by the Committee and that it should properly be considered by the registrar and the tribunal. All the rhetoric about whether it would be a good thing or a bad thing is not the point. Why should the hon. Gentleman decide the bad thing? Why not leave it up to the registrar?

Michael Foster: I am most interested in that intervention because I clearly remember the arguments made about improving the stock and quality of the species. I wrote them down, because I thought they were such a joke. I remember the comments about being selective by taking out the weaker and sicker hares. I wrote that down, because it was a great joke. I also remember the argument that hare hunting should be subject to a tribunal, but the same Conservative Members said that we could not put the question of mink before the tribunal and that they should be hunted without being subject to the registration procedure.

Lembit Öpik: Surely the hon. Gentleman will accept that we are discussing matters of judgment. I am not speaking for other hon. Members in the Committee, but it seemed that mink came into the rat and rabbit category. I am not clear why he believes that hares are at the other end of the spectrum.

Michael Foster: I would like to think that I made that clear this morning on the grounds of utility and utility only. The hon. Gentleman makes a persuasive case of wanting to engage in the debate and said that it involves fine judgment, yet he referred to Labour Members being prejudiced. Again, I thought that I would write that word down. He said that we were prejudiced, because we do not happen to share his view. He then said that it is a matter of judgment and that we should engage in a debate.

Lembit Öpik: Let me clarify what I said. I was not accusing anyone of prejudice. I remind the hon. Gentleman that I finished my contribution by saying that such matters should be assessed on the basis of logical judgment rather than on the basis of prejudice. I assure the hon. Gentleman that I am not accusing
 him of prejudice. I have tried hard to take a genuinely thoughtful and logical approach to the matter with mutual respect for both sides in the discussion and I am disappointed that he chose to suggest that I was denigrating the argument and suggesting that Labour Members are acting prejudicially.

Michael Foster: I have a pretty good recollection of what the hon. Gentleman said and the way in which the word ''prejudiced'' was used. I would not go out of my way to accuse someone who did not happen to agree with me of being prejudiced. I say to the hon. Gentleman, in a spirit of friendliness, that it is easy to make comments about always wanting to make a judgment and looking at the evidence base, but on the Government Benches it seems odd that whenever that assessment is made the pro-hunting view always prevails. That worries me.
 We have had a long debate on the new clause. I hope that the Committee will read what my right hon. Friend the Minister said and the persuasive arguments made by my hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire, and my contribution. I look forward to their support for new clause 10.

Peter Luff: I had hoped to avoid speaking in this debate, but I have been provoked by the Minister's lack of intellectual rigour during his comments on new clause 10 and by what the hon. Member for Worcester has just said. It is true that on most issues the Middle Way Group wants to maintain hunting and we are in favour of hare hunting continuing under certain codes of conduct. However, the hon. Gentleman should recognise the journey that the hunting lobby has made in coming to the Middle Way Group's position. That has been a huge change and an acceptance of statutory regulation and enforceability of important codes of conduct that would have the effect of removing any allegations of cruelty from hunting. He does himself a disservice when he fails to recognise that journey by the hunting lobby on so many issues, including hare hunting.
 I was genuinely disappointed with the Minister's response. I had thought fondly that we were primarily discussing hare coursing—I made that clear during an intervention—and that on hare hunting the Minister would have the intellectual rigour to resist new clause 10. I now discover that I was wrong and I suppose that I was naive. 
 I remember vividly a discussion I had some months ago with the Minister's PPS, who, sadly, is not in his place, when he said—

Alun Michael: I remind the hon. Gentleman of the convention that officials should be protected. I do not mind any insults that the hon. Gentleman throws at me.

Peter Luff: That redoubles my sense of determination to make a serious speech on the issue. The Minister knows what PPS stands for: Parliamentary Private Secretary. I would never insult officials. I know a number of the Minister's officials and they were very helpful to us during the drafting of the Hunting Options Bill. Their intellectual credibility, consistency and honour is not in doubt at all, but regretfully the
 Government's is. The Middle Way Group has been told by the Minister that hare hunting would be subject to the utility and least suffering tests of registration. We imagined that he would stick to that rigorous and sensible position. He has not done so.
 Today he has invited his colleague to vote to ban hare hunting outright. That reminds me of a conversation that I had with the Minister's Parliamentary Private Secretary, the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Peter Bradley) at Euston station some time ago. He said, ''We are not discussing whether to ban hunting, but how to ban hunting.'' Today we have seen the truth of those words. The mask has indeed slipped. I accept that the tests of utility and least suffering could work if applied to hare hunting. That is a sensible way forward. 
 We accepted the Minister's proposition, which is why the Middle Way Group initially gave a cautious welcome to the whole Bill. We believe that the Minister should now have the credibility to insist that his hon. Friends support him in the structure of his Bill in relation to hare hunting. [Hon. Members: ''It's a free vote.''] I accept that. I chose my words carelessly, but by implication the Minister invited hon. Members to vote for new clause 10 in his winding-up speech. I know that he did not use the exact words, but we all know what he meant. He meant, ''I don't mind how you vote, in fact, privately I agree with you.'' I am sorry about that. 
 I do not know in detail the arguments about the utility of hare hunting. The Minister quoted selectively from the Burns report. I have not quoted from the Burns report at all during the proceedings because of the danger of quoting selectively, but I am going to now. Paragraph 5.81 states: 
''Hares eat crops such as oilseed rape and turnip, and particularly grasses and cereals. In addition, hares can eat high value market garden crops, and will often kill newly-planted young trees and shrubs. Some of this damage can be of economic significance to individual growers.''
 I will not continue quoting, but there is a clear argument that the hare is a pest. Whether hare hunting is an effective way of controlling the species, I do not know. I do not believe that the Minister or anyone else on the Committee knows either. However, we are about to pre-judge the utility test on the basis of prejudice rather than hard-headed scientific analysis. That is profoundly wrong. 
 I declare a modest interest. I referred earlier in a rather light-hearted intervention to the Leadon Vale basset hounds. They hunt in my constituency and through a large reach of the Severn Vale. I went out with them once, and I rather enjoyed it. Perhaps the Minister is right, and the utility is small. I saw more hares than the basset hounds saw and they were all running away from the dogs. It is clear that there is a case to be made to the registrar for the utility of hare hunting. 
 The Minister should persuade his hon. Friends to stick with the original intellectual analysis on which he has guided the Committee with varying degrees of good temper during the past few weeks. I am disappointed that now, with one casual aside to his 
 colleagues, he has encouraged them to dismiss any possible case for the utility of hare hunting.

Edward Garnier: The danger of the Minister's conduct is all the greater because we are not in a sixth-form college discussion group. We are talking about the extension of the criminal law. If we extend the law in such a haphazard way when some Back Bencher comes forward—no doubt for good reasons as he sees it—to ban a particular activity, and the Minister swallows that as a representative of the Government, we are not making criminal law in the way that it ought to be made.

Peter Luff: I agree with my hon. and learned Friend. That is why I am now speaking when I had not intended to. The Minister had made clear his position on hare coursing. We knew what it was, and he defended it, as is his right. I had thought that his position on hare hunting was equally clear, and I had imagined that he would stick to that position. He is inviting us to make a radical change to a different group of people from fox and deer hunters. I know that—

Edward Garnier: And different from the hare coursers.

Peter Luff: And different from the hare coursers, as my hon. and learned Friend rightly says. He knows that I have reservations about hare coursing, which is why I shall not vote on clause stand part on hare coursing. [Hon. Members: ''Oh!''] I am only repeating something that I said earlier. I am sorry that it is so surprising. I said it on the Floor of the House as well.

Lembit Öpik: Given that we have been accused of being intransigent, surely it should be a matter of record that the Middle Way Group does listen to arguments. We have been persuaded to some extent by what we have heard, to the point of agreeing to try to get some more evidence on hare coursing if possible. Fundamentally, the problem is that if the philosophy of the Bill begins to appear compromised, concerns will be raised on what changes might be made to other parts of the Bill at present and perhaps in the future.

Peter Luff: The hon. Gentleman is right. I repeat that we have been driven in our consideration of these matters by two guiding lights. Our golden thread has two twines. One is human freedom and liberty and the idea that this House should not interfere with human freedom unless there are overwhelming reasons for doing so. We should tolerate those with whom we do not agree unless there are strong reasons for not doing so. The second is animal welfare. That is why on another subject, which I shall not labour or I should be ruled out of order, we are doing a study on whether our view is accurate. We will be bound by the results of that study. I do not know what it will find. It may prove that we are wrong, in which case we shall have to change our view. That will be painful and difficult, but we will do it.
 I really think that the Minister should now apply the same intellectual consistency to his Bill. He should reflect on what he has just said because, as my hon. and learned Friend has made clear, he is proposing a radical extension of the criminal law in a way that was not foreseen when today's proceedings began. We thought that today he would stick by his original view, 
 and I hoped that he would, but he has not. It is quite clear how the vote will go this evening, given what he has already said. It is clear that new clause 10 will go into the Bill. I hope that if this Bill survives scrutiny on Report—many of us suspect that it will not and that a very different Bill again will then emerge from the Floor—new clause 10 will be discussed in another place. There, I am sure and confident that it will be struck out, in the interests of defending the Minister's own intellectual rigour and position.

Rob Marris: The hon. Gentleman is discussing the Bill's intellectual rigour. Of course, utility and cruelty form a centrepiece under clause 8. According to the figures in Burns, between 0.55 per cent. and 0.825 per cent. of the hares killed each year—on the best estimate that one can give—are killed as a result of hunting. The hon. Gentleman may have a different view, but it does not seem to me that there is much utility in the activity, if fewer than 1 per cent. of hares are killed in that way.

Peter Luff: I am trying not to make an unnecessarily long speech.

Mike Hall: The hon. Gentleman is not succeeding.

Peter Luff: If I am not succeeding, it is partly because I am being provoked. The hon. Gentleman would be ill advised to make further interventions, as I have a train to catch.
 The hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West has been listening to the argument. I have disagreed with him several times, but he has consistently listened to the argument and engaged with it, in a way that I find commendable even though I do not find his conclusions commendable. He makes an interesting point. However, the Middle Way Group does not accept that simple and crude understanding of hunting, whether of hares or any other animal. It is not simply a matter of the absolute numbers killed by the activity. There are all kinds of other knock-on benefits to the species and the environment, which we believe should be part of the utility test. That is not a question just of numbers killed, but of the health of the species, the protection of the landscape for the species, disease control and a host of other matters. I am afraid that the utility test defined in the Bill does not acknowledge those. That is because the Bill is an attempt to ban hunting, not to advance animal welfare. That is the tragedy.

John Gummer: Will my hon. Friend reflect on the fact that if the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West is right in his analysis, he is saying that, right from the beginning, the Minister was presenting a Bill that had something that is not rigorous and not intellectually sustainable at its core? That is a serious argument for the hon. Gentleman to put forward. It is odd that we on the Opposition Benches—the Middle Way Group and those of us who take a traditionalist view—have now been driven to defending the Minister's integrity and rationality, as against the position that he has now taken.

Peter Luff: My right hon. Friend makes a characteristically cogent point.

Alun Michael: I do not wish to provoke the hon. Gentleman nor do I wish to extend the debate, because I think that we have dealt with the issues. However, on several occasions he and others have impugned the way in which I have dealt with the Bill. I was clear about my view in my summation and response and I stand by the integrity of the Bill and my approach to it. I have indicated the fine nature of the arguments on this issue. It may make the hon. Gentleman feel better to insult me, but I reject his implications.

Peter Luff: I understand the Minister's point, and, in many ways, I pay tribute to the way that he has conducted the process. Others may take a different view. However, you pays your money and you takes your choice. My choice is that the Minister has not had the intellectual consistency to defend the position that we thought he had set out in his famous golden thread argument.

James Gray: It is not necessarily a question of whether the Minister has been intellectually consistent, as he says that he will vote against new clause 10. Much more important is that if his rebellious Back Benchers blow a hole in the intellectual consistency of the Bill, his reputation will be ruined and the whole thing will go down the Swanee. [Interruption.]

Peter Luff: The Minister says from a sedentary position that that is petty stuff. Until his speech a few minutes ago, my friends with the Leadon Vale basset hounds thought that they would have their chance of a day in court with the registrar. They thought that they would have a chance to pursue the intellectual logic of the Bill and defend their activity. Now they know that they were wrong, because what the Minister said will deny them that chance. I plead with the Minister even now to reflect on whether the original proposition that hare hunting should be subject to the registration and tribunal process, in common with the other forms of hunting, is not the better way forward.
 We had an entertaining speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit Öpik) about Scrabble-playing rabbits and so on, but I cannot find any consistency in a Bill that says that not a single hare can be hunted but rabbits are fair game. Where is the animal welfare logic in that? What animal welfare gain is achieved by pursuing such an approach? 
 I am prepared to give the Minister the benefit of the doubt. I believe that he is interested in animal welfare, as is, for example, the hon. Member for West Ham, who is sincerely interested in it—I pay tribute to him and do not doubt his motives. I doubt the motives of some people, however. After all, the people who go rabbiting do not wear pink coats, they do not have hunting horns, they are not seen to be toffs, whereas the people who hunt hares are organised. The beagles and the bassets are organised. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Worcester repeated his old slur about mink hunting. I made my position on that clear during an earlier debate. I changed my mind about how to vote on that because of the anger directed from the Government Benches at those who dare to include a bit of ceremony and pageantry in what they do in the countryside. We have seen those motives at work again today. I am driven to the conclusion that what 
 motivated the hon. Member for Worcester to table the new clause is that same dislike of the organised structure around the activity—a class hatred. I am forced to draw that conclusion.

Colin Pickthall: May I say how much I admire the hon. Gentleman's ingenuity? On every item, he manages to find a reason to be provoked and to vote with his colleagues who believe in the continuation of blood sports.

Peter Luff: It is not that I manage to be provoked. I, too, had a train to catch tonight, which I shall now miss. My concern is genuine—it is not ingenuity that is designed to waste time. This is a serious and important debate.
 I thought that we were discussing hare coursing, but I now discover that the Minister is opening the back door to banning hare hunting. That is despicable. We are changing the criminal law in a way that we had not anticipated when we began today's proceedings and I am very disappointed. I urge the Minister to reflect on what has been said.

Edward Garnier: Does my hon. Friend think of the words ''false prospectus'' when he considers the way we have been treated? If someone tried to sell shares on such a basis, they would be in trouble.

Peter Luff: My hon. and learned Friend's intervention is powerful and speaks for itself. My hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire wants to make some remarks, to which I shall listen with great care and interest. In closing, I urge the Minister to reflect that what he has done tonight by giving a green light to his Back Benchers to ban hare hunting outright is profoundly wrong and contradicts the spirit in which he launched the Bill and this whole process.

James Gray: One would have thought that if a party, or an interest group, had such an overwhelming majority as those who are opposed to hunting have in the House of Commons and wished to ban certain activities, it would have had the courage of its convictions and drafted a Bill that did precisely that. There is no purpose in drafting a complex Bill such as this, which contains the registrar and the tribunal procedures and 50-odd clauses, after all the consideration at Portcullis house and six or seven weeks in Committee discussing the fine points of who appoints the tribunal. What is the purpose of all that intellectual activity if it transpires that certain Back Benchers are now determined to drive a coach and horses through the logic of the Bill?
 When we heard about the Bill at the time of the Portcullis house hearings, we ignored the predictions made by Mr. Philip Webster in The Times. He said accurately, three or four months before the hearings, that the Minister intended to ban stag hunting and hare hunting and do a variety of other things. We chose to ignore that. We said, ''Fine. If the tests of cruelty and utility are properly drawn, if the registrar and the tribunal do their job properly, we are ready to listen to them, to work with them and to understand the Bill. We are not happy with it, we will not encourage it, but we are ready to go with it.'' 
 Now, we discover in the clauses dealing with hare hunting—doubtless we shall discover similar things on Report—that the Minister knew perfectly well all the time that the Bill was nonsense and a charade. He knew that it was a cover to try to buy off the countryside's fury and our side of the debate, a cover behind which lies the true deal that was done in this Room in the parliamentary Labour party meetings. The Minister told the PLP and the hon. Member for Worcester, ''If you want a ban on hare hunting, you can have it.'' 
 We must look carefully at the scientific evidence. It must be possible for the registrar and the tribunal to weigh up the delicate and difficult questions of cruelty on the one hand and utility on the other. They should not be allowed to do so only if there is some form of incontrovertible evidence. Incidentally, the Minister used the words ''incontrovertible evidence'' previously. The fact that he is now changing that to ''incontrovertible arguments'' demonstrates that he knows perfectly well that he does not have any incontrovertible evidence. 
 If incontrovertible evidence proved that any one activity should be banned, whether it be hare hunting or anything else, it might be reasonable for the Bill to say that. However, the letter from Professor Bateson makes it plain that in general there is no such incontrovertible evidence. He says: 
''a political solution should involve some kind of cost-benefit analysis such as has been carried out with the uses of animals in scientific research. I think that the welfare issues have to be balanced against the conservation, economic and recreational issues involved in hunting. That lies outside any scientific considerations.''
 Earlier he says: 
''I am told that the evidence . . . was described as 'incontrovertible'. Even though the evidence referred to was collected by me and my research associate, I would not want to describe my conclusions in those terms. No serious scientist could do that in a new area of research.''

Peter Luff: Labour Members are barracking my hon. Friend. I think that they misunderstand the point that he is trying to make. The last paragraph of Professor Bateson's letter does not refer to deer hunting. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Weaver Vale has just intervened. He said ''You've got a copy too''. A copy is on the Table and is available to all members of the Committee. I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman did not know that.
 Does my hon. Friend agree that the last paragraph of Professor Bateson's letter refers not to deer hunting but to all forms of hunting and therefore to hare hunting, which we are debating?

James Gray: That is correct. That is why I have prayed it in aid in this debate. Professor Bateson made it plain that there is no such thing as incontrovertible evidence or incontrovertible arguments. There is no way in which one could pray in aid Professor Bateson in favour of the outright banning of any activity. The Minister said that I had misled the Committee and refused to say sorry to me or the Committee. Professor Bateson's argument demonstrates that what I said is the case.
 If the Bill is to be intellectually coherent, it would be possible for it ban something on which there was incontrovertible evidence that it was bad. There is no 
 such evidence. The only reason why the Government are now trying to ban hare hunting is because of a political square. There has been a deal. The Minister has done a deal with some of his Back Benchers. 
 I understand that the hon. Member for Worcester has said that he does not intend to move his amendments on hunting above 500 m and cub hunting. Why has he done that? It is because he has done a deal. He said that he wanted to ban hare hunting and that if he got that, he would agree to drop his other new clause. It is a shady deal done in the parliamentary Labour party, and it amounts to the banning of an activity that is carried out by thousands of law-abiding citizens up and down this nation. The Labour party has done a nasty political deal, and I hope that the Committee will vote against it. 
 Question put, That the clause stand part of the Bill:—
The Committee divided: Ayes 17, Noes 6.

Question accordingly agreed to. 
 Clause 7 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

New clause 10 - Hares

No. NC10, to move the following Clause:— 
 'Registration under Part 2 shall not be effected in respect of the hunting of hares.'.—[Mr. Michael Foster.]
 Brought up, and read the First time. 
 Motion made, and Question put, That the clause be read a Second time:—
The Committee divided: Ayes 16, Noes 8.

Question accordingly agreed to. 
 Clause read a Second time, and added to the Bill.

James Gray: On a point of order, Mrs. Roe. Can you recall any occasion in which a Minister of the Crown failed to vote on his own clause?

Marion Roe: That is not a point of order.
 Further consideration adjourned.—[Mr. Ainger.] 
 Adjourned accordingly at twenty-nine minutes past Five o'clock till Tuesday 25 February at five minutes to Nine o'clock.